A Frenchman described by British and French newspapers as “a former commando in the French special forces… now a mercenary in Ivory Coast”, was cleared last week of using Malta to smuggle warplanes to Africa.

On Thursday, the Courts of Justice in Valletta acquitted Jean-Jacques Fuentès, a former French commando, of exporting two Strikemasters, a British warplane, from Malta in 2003, possibly to be used by the Ivory Coast government against civilian insurgents.

The Strikemasters, recognised as one of the best warplanes produced for the UK military, were bought in the UK by a company, whose sole director was Fuentès himself.

Since both military planes were disarmed, they were free to leave UK soil as normal civilian crafts. The planes were flown to Malta, where they were allegedly given new Ivory Coast registration numbers and decorated with the country’s official insignia, before being sent to Ivory Coast.

But Magistrate Antonio Micallef Trigona ruled last week that there was not sufficient evidence to show that the planes were going to be used as military aircraft since they were clearly registered as civilian aircraft before leaving the UK, The Times reported on Friday. “In the court’s opinion, the fact that the aircraft were intended to train the Ivorian air force cadets is of no consequence and does not, on its own, translate the aircraft into a military one,” the magistrate ruled.

In 2003, British security forces alerted Maltese authorities about the presence of the two planes in Malta, and police investigations were launched. In May 2007, the Maltese government had asked a French court in Bordeaux to extradite Fuentès to Malta, maltastar.com reported.

In August, Fuentès pleaded that his conditional freedom be made less harsh because he could not leave Malta, not even for a time, but his plea was rejected.

The newspaper Observer revealed the case after two British military Strikemaster fighter jets that had been sold to the Kenyan government in the 1970s were spotted at the Malta airport, with freshly painted Ivory Coast emblems and registration numbers, maltastar.com reported last week.

Shortly afterwards, the two planes left the island on their way to the Ivory Coast, where they could be used by the forces of the country’s leader Laurent Gbagbo in the violent struggle against rebel insurgents in the northern part of the country. Fuentès is believed to have worked for the Ivory Coast government during the insurgency, French newspaper Liberation said last year.

The Strikemaster is one of the most successful fighters made in Britain. Fitted with two machine guns and wings designed to carry 3,000lbs of bombs or rockets, it is well suited for counter-insurgency, ground attacks and advanced pilot training.

The Observer had reported that when the planes were spotted in Malta, UK security sources were alarmed at the way “lethal British military hardware had slipped out of the country without official scrutiny, licence or control”.

French paper L’Express said last week that Fuentès had been recruited by Abidjan in 2002, and, before he was extradited to Malta, he had been heard as a witness by Florence Michon, a Paris tribunal judge, in the inquiry on the death, on 6 November 2004, of nine French soldiers and an American civilian in an air raid over Bouaké. Fuentès said he was not aware what happened.

Before his arrest in Bordeaux, the French officer had been four times to the Ivory Coast trying to negotiate the release of Claude Dauphin and Jean-Pierre Valentini, two officers of the Trafigura company who were being held in connection with the toxic waste on board the ship Probo Koala.

He was then said to have met again his old friends, beginning with General Philippe Mangou, head of the loyalist army.