Belfast, now Baghdad?

Aegis Defence Services is working in Iraq with funding from the U.S. Defense Department.
The London-published Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported that a “trophy video” appeared to show security guards in Baghdad “randomly shooting Iraqi civilians”
The video, which has been seen by the Echo, shows four separate clips in which automatic fire is directed from the rear of an SUV.
In one of the clips, a Mercedes car traveling behind the SUV is hit and rams into another car stopped on the road. People are seen running from the car that was struck by the Mercedes – but nobody gets out of the Mercedes itself.
Another clip shows fire being directed, seemingly at random, at the street surface and then directed at a car again driving behind the SUV. The car pulls in to side of the road and this time a man gets out.
Yet another clip clearly shows bullets striking the hood of a car and the car lurching to halt. Nobody is seen getting out.
At one point a spent bullet round appears in the video camera lens inside the SUV. Voices speaking English are also heard inside the SUV.
The four clips are accompanied by an Elvis Presley soundtrack.
The Derry-based Pat Finucane Center has raised the allegations surrounding the video clips with the U.S. consul general in Belfast.
The Sunday Telegraph stated that the video initially came to light on a website that had been “linked unofficially” to Aegis Defence Services and was apparently set up by and for current and former employees of the company.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, all of the shooting incidents apparently took place on “Route Irish”, a route that runs between Baghdad and its airport.
Route Irish, considered the most dangerous stretch of highway in the world right now, got its name from New York’s Fighting 69th regiment which recently returned to the U.S. after a tour of duty in Iraq.
The famed unit was operating in the Baghdad area where it was assigned to patrolling and convoy duty on what duly became known “Route Irish.”
The Telegraph story included its own descriptions of the shootings.
In one of the videotaped attacks, the paper reported: “a Mercedes is fired on at a distance of several hundred yards before it crashes in to a civilian taxi.
“In the last clip, a white civilian car is raked with machine gun fire as it approaches an unidentified security company vehicle. Bullets can be seen hitting the vehicle before it comes to a slow stop.”
The report added that there were “no clues” as to the shooter “but either a Scottish or Irish accent can be heard in at least one of the clips above Elvis Presley’s Mystery Train, the music which accompanies the video.”
Since the Sunday Telegraph report the shootings have been linked on various websites to a South African member of an Aegis “Victory Team.”
Aegis Defense Services has denied that there is any evidence linking the video clips to the company, but it is carrying out an investigation into the allegations nevertheless.
The British Foreign Office has stated that the allegations are the concern of the U.S. authorities because Aegis was contracted by the Pentagon.
Civilian security companies working under contract in Iraq must conform to the same rules as the U.S. military when it comes to opening fire.
The Sunday Telegraph reported a senior Iraqi interior ministry spokesman as saying that there had been numerous claims of private security company personnel opening fire on civilians.
“When the security companies kill people they just drive away and nothing is done. Sometimes we ring the companies concerned and they deny everything. The families don’t get any money or compensation. I would say we have had about 50-60 incidents of this kind.” Capt Adnan Tawfiq told the paper.
Spicer and Aegis were last year granted a $293 million contract by the Pentagon for security and reconstruction work in Iraq.
The contract sparked a transatlantic controversy because of Spicer’s past record in Northern Ireland where, in the rank of lieutenant colonel, he commanded the Scots Guards regiment during a tour of duty in the early 1990s.
Soldiers in that regiment shot and killed Belfast teenager Peter McBride in September of 1992. Spicer subsequently defended the actions of his men.
Two members of the regiment were tried for murder, convicted and sentenced to life. However, they were released after six years and reinstated in the unit.
Earlier this year, Spicer threatened to sue the Irish Echo and a member of the British parliament in the London High Court.
The threat followed in the wake of a report in the Echo that, among other things, pointed to U.S. criticism of the manner in which Aegis has been operating in Iraq.
A strongly critical report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has cited Aegis for not complying with a number of requirements contained in the contract with the U.S. Department of Defense.
The criticism rested in part on rules concerning guns and their use.
The report stated that Aegis had been unable to provide correct documents to verify that its employees were qualified to use weapons.
The basis for the Pat Finucane Center’s objection to the Iraq contract is rooted solely in the death of Peter McBride.
Spicer was not present at the scene of the shooting which took place September 4, 1992 in Belfast’s Upper Meadow Street.
McBride was shot in the back moments after being searched by a sergeant attached to the same patrol as the soldiers who fired their weapons. No weapon had been found on the teenager prior to shooting and none was found after it.
Despite his absence from the scene, Spicer’s position as commander of the regiment was to draw him to the center of the furious controversy that followed the death of the teenager, a controversy that continues to this day.
In its stated objection to the Iraq contract, first relayed to the Pentagon last December, the PFC stated that the “allegation” against Spicer was not that he advocated for the release of the two soldiers from prison after the shooting of McBride.
“The issue is that he opposed their arrest and opposed their being charged with any offense whatsoever. In a sworn affidavit, and again in his autobiography, Spicer has sought to portray an entirely fictitious and untruthful version of the events preceding, during and following the actual murder,” the center stated.
Spicer defended the actions of the two soldiers in a letter to the Times of London on the grounds that both believed they were involved in a terrorist incident and had accordingly acted in good faith, in accordance with the law, the rules of engagement, and their military training.
The Pentagon has rejected challenges to the Aegis contract.
The Department of The Army wrote five U.S. senators stating that the decision to award the contract to the Spicer-run Aegis Defense Services in May, 2004 was a “well founded” one.
The five senators, Charles Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Edward Kennedy, Chris Dodd and John Kerry wrote Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in August, 2004 calling on him to investigate the granting of the contract to Aegis.
In the letter, the senators pointed to Spicer’s record in Northern Ireland and allegations of his involvement in illicit arms deals in Africa.
The response to the senators’ letter came not from Rumsfeld, but from Sandra Sieber, director of the U.S. Army Contracting Agency.
Sieber wrote that neither Aegis nor Spicer were on the U.S. General Services Administration list of parties excluded from federal contracting. She said that the contracting officer responsible for selecting Aegis had not been aware of human rights allegations against Spicer and Aegis at the time the contract decision was made.
“However, our post-award review of the facts surrounding these matters did not establish that Mr. Spicer’s advocacy on behalf of his former soldiers had any bearing on his or Aegis’s record of integrity and business ethics,” Sieber wrote.
The Pat Finucane Center said in a statement this week that it was not yet possible to ascertain exactly which private security contractors were involved in the video clips.
“But two issues are of note from our perspective. Aegis has been tasked by the Pentagon to co-ordinate all private security transports in Iraq. Either the company was unaware of the incidents in question, which should raise concerns about how the contract is being fulfilled, or Aegis was aware of the allegations and chose to do nothing,” the statement said.
“The second issue concerns the response of the British Foreign Office (FCO) to the allegations. It seems strange that allegations that British citizens are involved in human rights abuses should be a matter for a foreign government,” the statement added.
The center’s Paul O’Connor, who was in Washington last week attempting to drum up congressional support for a rescinding of the Aegis contract, told the Echo that the “unofficial” website contained a message board which indicated widespread use of drugs and alcohol by Aegis employees in Iraq.
He said that there indications of “alcohol runs” by security convoys and also “dummy runs” to pick up people who simply did not exist.
“If these allegations bear out they will be pretty damaging. We don’t have proof that Aegis employees were involved, but the video and the message board needs to be investigated. We have advised the U.S. consul in Belfast on this,” O’Connor said.
One of messages on the message board refers to the video and reads in part: “Let me explain how the public is going to see this: It looks like adolescent jerkoffs playing Grand Theft Auto and killing people that try to pass their truck.
“There is no indication in the video that they are escorting a convoy, or that targets are given any sort of warning besides flying lead. When the convoy comes to a stop on the empty highway and still shoots at people approaching way too fast to read any warning signs or even know what the f… is going on, it looks like the Aegis guys are intentionally slowing down to f… with these people and do them harm.
“But the cream of it all is the soundtrack. Music that says ‘just another day at the grindstone, shooting at people taking their kids to school’. Ha ha, I didn’t start this post to rip you guys up but it just occurred to me, you’re being paid to INCREASE security in Iraq? This is what increased security looks like? Security for who, yourselves?”