The secret shame of Iraq's mercenaries

Jean McBride has been following recent media coverage of Iraq very closely. Reports of trigger-happy mercenaries firing on Iraqi civilians have focused attention once more on the Aegis private security company and its boss Tim Spicer. And McBride has more reason than anyone to recall Spicer’s role in one of the bitterest controversies of the Northern Troubles.

Aegis Defence Services Ltd. is one of the biggest private security firms operating in Iraq: Tim Spicer is its chief executive. Spicer had a lengthy career in the British army before moving into the private sector in the 1990s.
No incident in that career brought him more attention than the actions of two soldiers under his command in Belfast in September 1992. Mark Wright and James Fischer fatally shot Jean McBride’s son Peter, an 18-year-old father of two, at a check-point in the New Lodge area after he had already been searched.
Paul O’Connor of the Derry-based Pat Finucane Centre has been following the case for more than a decade. “Tim Spicer was the first senior officer to have access to the soldiers at a time when the RUC was denied access,” he explains. “He testified at their trial and said that his men had done no wrong and should not have been charged.”
Despite the support of their commanding officer, the two soldiers were convicted of murder in 1995. Spicer rejected the verdict (upheld on appeal) and continued to agitate for the release of Wright and Fisher. “After they were convicted he helped organise a campaign involving present and former army officers, it was run from the headquarters of the Scots Guards in London,” Paul O’Connor recalls. “Spicer made a number of claims that were totally and utterly untrue. He claimed that Peter McBride probably did have some kind of device. He claimed that local people probably ghosted the device away after he was shot.”
The campaign bore fruit in 1998 when the release of the two soldiers was ordered by the British government. They were allowed to resume service in the Army. According to Aegis, Spicer still maintains his view that his men should never have been jailed in the first place: “It is a strongly held belief (by both Tim Spicer and much of the Army establishment) that the circumstances surrounding this incident were such that the soldiers were wrongly convicted of murder, and that the incident was and continues to be used for political purposes.”
Paul O’Connor takes a scathing view of that statement. “Spicer still doesn’t accept the verdict of a British court of law,” he argues. “He think it’s okay to shoot an unarmed man in the back. Someone who believes that is not fit to command men in a combat situation.”
In the meantime, Tim Spicer had moved into the world of private security as the CEO of Sandline. In that capacity he was embroiled in a number of high-profile controversies: this included a brief spell in a Papua New Guinea prison after Spicer was arrested by the country’s army. Sandline was eventually wound down and Spicer set up Aegis in time to bid for the lucrative contracts awarded by Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) when it took charge of Iraq.
Aegis was granted a $293m deal to provide security for the CPA.
Jean McBride was disgusted by the news. “As Commanding Officer of the Scots Guards he told a pack of lies about Peter’s murder and dragged his name through the dirt,” she commented at the time. “God knows what his own private army will do in Iraq.” Five US senators – including Hilary Clinton, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy – wrote to Donald Rumsfeld questioning the deal and recalling Spicer’s role in the McBride case. Clinton described the Aegis chief as “an individual with a history of supporting excessive use of force against a civilian population.”
Since the contract was granted, Aegis has been the subject of heavy criticism. In 2005, an audit carried out by a US government agency found that many Aegis employees lacked the training required to handle weapons they had been issued with, including AK-47s and M4 assault rifles. This was soon followed by allegations that its contractors fired on Iraqi civilians.
A video was posted on the Internet by a former Aegis employee, which showed automatic fire being directed from the back of an SUV against civilian cars. Aegis describes the clip as a “malicious attempt to discredit Aegis” in which “the incidents displayed had been taken entirely out of context.” A US army investigation cleared the company. But the Pat Finucane Centre was contacted by the man who posted the video, Rod Stoner, who told them that the inquiry had not interviewed key witnesses – including himself.
“We asked for a meeting with US officials. In reality, this sort of thing happens every day and the government doesn’t really give a toss – they said they’d go off and investigate and come back to us,” says Paul O’Connor. “Our understanding was that the shooter, a South African, was ghosted out of the country until the investigation was over. We asked if they had interviewed any Iraqi civilians – they hadn’t.”
O’Connor notes that all private security firms operating in Iraq have been granted immunity from prosecution by the CPA. The recent furore will almost certainly add to pressure for that immunity to be revoked.