Paul Barril, French ‘Supergendarme’ Turned Mercenary, Has Died

After years in elite police units, he drew scrutiny from human rights groups for selling arms and providing other services to unsavory governments. He was 80. Paul Barril’s offer to African dictators was straightforward: Your opponents will be subjected to surveillance and manipulation. Newspapers will be “ infiltrated .” Plots against the state will be “neutralized.” Plenty of heads of state took up the services he offered, including Omar Bongo in Gabon and Denis Sassou-Nguesso in Congo.

Other clients went to Paris to do their shopping at his Security Action Store , which offered the latest in bulletproof vests or night-vision goggles, as Mr. Barril recounted in one of his six autobiographies, “The Elysee’s Secret Wars” (1996). Mr. Barril was often described in the news media as a former French “supergendarme” for his longtime work in elite units.

After he left the gendarmerie, or national police, in 1984, he became a security adviser and mercenary provider across the African continent and was implicated by human rights groups in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. His death, on Oct.