An elaborate plan to sneak Moammar Gadhafi’s son into the Mexico was apparently hatched by a Mount Forest woman.
Mexican authorities say a son of the late Libyan dictator and three relatives had plotted to get into Mexico under false names and move to a safe house at a posh Pacific coast resort.
Their plan allegedly involved two Mexicans, a Canadian and a Danish suspect, all of whom have been detained in Mexico.
Mexican intelligence agents uncovered the plot in early September as al-Saadi Gadhafi was fleeing Libya shortly after his father’s ouster.
He never made it to Mexico, but did reach Niger, where he has been living.
The plotters allegedly jetted into Mexico, opened bank accounts and bought properties meant to be used as safe houses in several parts of the country, including one at a resort on Mexico’s Pacific coast.
The Mexican Interior secretary says the leader of the plot was a Canadian woman he identified as Cynthia Vanier.
She is being held, along with three other suspects, under a form of house arrest on suspicion of using false documents, human smuggling and organized crime.
Vanier runs Vanier Consulting Ltd., a “practice dedicated to high-risk unconventional mediation work,” according to a resume obtained by The Canadian Press.
A woman who answered the telephone at Vanier Consulting in Mount Forest, Ont., would not give her name, and did not respond to requests for an interview.
The Foreign Affairs Department confirmed Vanier’s arrest and said officials in Ottawa and Mexico City are “providing consular assistance as required.”
Vanier worked as a mediator between Attawapiskat First Nation and the nearby Victor diamond mine, owned by De Beers Canada, in the fall of 2009, a reserve official said.
Her resume also cites work with various other aboriginal groups, including Caledonia’s Six Nations of the Grand River from 2006 to 2007. She also says she assisted in the Ipperwash Provincial Park standoff in 1995.
Local Conservative MP Gary Schellenberger says he hasn’t been contacted by anyone about the woman’s status.
And he tells Bayshore Broadcasting News he will not get involved until someone from the family asks him to.
