UN Monitor Mahtani Asked States for Favor of 'Regime Change' in Eritrea

SEMG's  Dinesh Mahtani 

UN Monitor Mahtani Asked States for Favor of 'Regime Change' in Eritrea


By Mattew Russell Lee,

A member of the UN’s Somalia Eritrea Monitoring Group has reportedly used UN SEMG time and supplies for unrelated advocacy regarding Eritrea, this reporter has learned and then obtained documentation of, exclusively put online here.

Sources told this reporter that Dinesh Mahtani, the finance expert on SEMG and previously on the DR Congo Sanctions group, was found requesting favors from member states, to which the SMEG reports. Here is a document:

A letter from Dinesh Mahtani, ostensibly in his SMEG role, saying that former Eritrean official Ali Abdu “has great potential to play a stabilizing role in Eritrea with the country possibly headed to an uncertain period in its history.” Eritrea says: regime change, on UN letter-head. Eritrea’s complaint, also obtained by this reporter, is now put online here. It concludes that Mahtani’s conduct “cannot be tolerated.” Now what?

 Here’s the SEMG’s membership, per their most recent report:

Jarat Chopra, Coordinator
Jeanine Lee Brudenell, Finance expert
Emmanuel Deisser, Arms expert
Aurélien Llorca, Transport expert
Dinesh Mahtani, Finance expert
Jörg Roofthooft, Transport/maritime expert
Babatunde Taiwo, Armed groups expert
Kristèle Younès, Humanitarian expert


This is hardly the first controversy in the SEMG — but usually the members wait until they are off or on their way off the Monitor Group to “let it all hang out,” as one source put it of previous SEMG chair Matt Bryden.

The current chair, Jarat Chopra, has faced complaints from Somalia, also exclusively reported by Inner City Press.

Bryden’s departure was telegraphed in remarks to, and a report by, Inner City Press on July 24, 2012 when Security Council members from three countries gave this reporter negative reviews of Bryden’s performance.

“He’s leaving,” one of them said dismissively and definitely of Bryden. There was snarky speculation Bryden may have been angling for a book deal.

With Bryden the questions were larger of leaking, of micro-managing the Eritrean air force and more. Those about Mahtani, the sources tell this reporter, are “bigger… regime change on UN letterhead.” We’ll have more on this.

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