PRIVATE security boss Erik Prince is facing UN sanctions over allegations he breached an arms embargo on Libya and planned to form a hit squad to take down opponents of General Khalifa Hiftar.

A confidential report to the UN security council, obtained by the New York Times and the Washington Post, alleged that the Trump ally organised a foreign mercenary force and shipped weapons to Gen Hiftar.

The general is trying to overthrow the UN-recognised Government of National Accord, headed by Fayez al-Serraj, to install rival body the Libyan House of Representatives.

According to the document, Mr Prince, who is a former Navy SEAL and brother of Trump’s education secretary Betsy DeVos, plotted an $80 million (£57m) operation to track down and assassinate Libyan commanders, some of whom were EU citizens.

It details how a friend and a former business partner of Mr Prince travelled to Jordan in 2019 to purchase US-made Cobra helicopters from the Jordanian military.

Authorities rebuffed them, doubting their credentials and forcing them to source alternative choppers from South Africa.

Mr Prince refused to co-operate with investigators and has remained tight-lipped about the allegations. But he faces a travel ban and his assets may be frozen under UN sanctions. 

Al-Jazeera journalist Kristen Saloomey said the revelations posed deep questions Mr Trump’s role in the affair.

“The UN report raises the question not only of whether or not a close associate of the [former] president violated an international arms embargo, but also of whether or not the president himself was complicit in defying stated US policy,” she said.

Mr Prince is known for founding the Blackwater security company, whose contractors were involved in the murder of unarmed civilians in Iraq.

Mr Trump pardoned four Blackwater operatives who were jailed for the 2007 Nisrour Square massacre in Baghdad shortly before leaving office.