Spicer security firm criticised by US auditors

A controversial British security firm awarded a lucrative contract in Iraq defended itself tonight in the wake of damning criticism by US inspectors.

Aegis Defence Services won a US government contract to help secure war-torn Iraq, protect aid workers and officials and coordinate numerous private security companies.

But a Pentagon audit report found it had failed to provide adequate weapons training for employees and did not properly vet Iraqi guards who could have posed a threat.

The report, published by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, said Aegis had not complied with several parts of its contract.

“There is no assurance that Aegis is providing the best safety and security for the government and reconstruction contractor personnel and facilities,” auditors said, although they added that concerns were being addressed.

The London-based firm was founded by Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer.

The decision to award the three-year contract to Aegis last May angered Irish nationalists and Irish-Americans because Mr Spicer spoke out in defence of two soldiers who were convicted of murdering 18-year-old Peter McBride in 1992.

Mr Spicer, who was also embroiled in the Arms-to-Africa affair in the late 1990s, said he was “delighted” when Scots Guards James Fisher and Mark Wright were not dismissed from the British military.

The Washington-based Irish National Caucus led a campaign to block the Aegis contract and wrote to President George Bush insisting it was covered in blood and should be ripped up.

Caucus president, Fr Sean McManus, said of the audit report: “The real issue here is not that Spicer’s employees are unqualified. The real issue is that Spicer is unqualified.

“He practised and condoned state terrorism in Northern Ireland and he will leave a trail of mischief and tears in Iraq.”

Mr Spicer came to prominence in a 1999 report into the flouting of a UN arms embargo on Sierra Leone.

A parliamentary committee attacked senior foreign office officials for treating the embargo in a “disgracefully casual manner”.

A company of which Mr Spicer was then a director, Sandline International, had been supplying arms to the deposed President of Sierra Leone, Ahmad Kabbah.

Mr Spicer said he had been acting with the knowledge and support of the British government.

He also intervened in Papua New Guinea in 1997 and the army there subsequently launched a coup.