Aegis Defence Services

Also known as Aegis Specialist Risk Management.

Based in London, the company was founded by former Scots Guard Tim Spicer who made headlines with the Sandline affair when he was caught shipping 30 tons of arms to Sierra Leone in apparent violation of a UN weapons embargo and arrested in the abortive coup in Papua New Guinea. Spicer was a former British Army lieutenant colonel when two soldiers under his command shot and killed a Catholic teenager, Peter McBride, in Northern Ireland in 1992. The soldiers were subsequently convicted of murder. Spicer has steadfastly defended them. One of his friends, the ex-SAS officer Simon Mann, was arrested in Zimbabwe in February 2007 and extradited to Equatorial Guinea on charges of plotting a coup against the EG government. Mann was convicted and sentenced to 34 years imprisonment but pardoned and released "on humanitarian grounds" in November 2009. Frederick Forsyth, the author of 'Dogs of War', is one of Aegis shareholders.

The firm recently signed a new contract with the Pentagon worth $145m (£79m) over protests from its American competitors. This is an extension of the earlier $293 million 'cost plus' contract that it had signed with the Pentagon in May 2003.

According to Naomi Klein, the CPA's Project Management Office contracted with the firm to protect its employees from "assassination, kidnapping, injury and "embarrassment." In a separate contract, the firm also provides security for employees working on the Iraqi Oil-for-Food corruption inquiry.

The firm employs a total of 930 people in Iraq and besides co-ordinating communications between coalition forces, civilian contractors working on reconstruction projects, and their private security firms, it also provides bodyguards for senior American and Iraqi officials. It operates one national and six regional command-centres and acts as a link between coalition forces and civilian contractors on security issues, relaying information on rebel activity.

In November 2005 Aegis tried to join the International Peace Operations Association (IPOA), the only trade organization for security contractors. Aegis' membership bid comes just as the IPOA is trying to reposition the industry as for-profit providers of armed men as peace keepers. In a vote several months ago, IPOA rejected Spicer's company. Spicer was 'surprised' by IPOA's initial rejection 'especially since we were invited to apply,' he said in a recent telephone interview with Corporate Watch.

Trophy videos in Iraq

Rod Stoner, a former British army officer and Aegis employee, who worked for the company between 2004 and 2005, posted videos on the internet implicating Aegis in shooting civilians in Iraq. According to a statement from Stoner, “We don’t know whether it was an innocent civilian or whether that was an insurgent—we don’t know, because we never stop.”

The series of “trophy” videos appear to show security guards in Baghdad randomly shooting Iraqi civilians. All of the shooting incidents apparently took place on “Route Irish”, a road that links the airport to Baghdad.

In one of the videos, a car is fired on at a distance of several hundred yards before it crashes into a taxi. In another, a white civilian car is raked with machine gun fire as it approaches an unidentified security company vehicle. Bullets can be seen hitting the car before it comes to a slow stop.

Despite denying that the videos had anything to do with Aegis employees, the security company got a high court injunction last Friday against Stoner. This closed down the website and prohibited him from speaking to the press.

PR and Lobbying Firms

Aegis are clients of The S.P.A. Way. a London-based PR firm run by Sara Pearson. The company claims that it does not charge a fee unless its coverage meets three strict criteria, that it should:

1. Be an original piece set up by the Agency
2. Be in the agreed media
3. Carry a minimum of 2 of the 3 agreed messages

A great deal of coverage of Aegis in the UK media could arguably be seen as fitting these requirements.

Pearson's association with Aegis boss Tim Spicer goes back to 1997 when the two were introduced through Michael Grunberg. Pearson hosted the press conference that took place on Spicer's return to Britain following the Sandline Affair in Papua New Guinea.

People

Board of Directors

• Field Marshal the Lord Inge KG GCB DL: Chairman (Non-executive)
• Keith Henry: Deputy Chairman (Non-executive)
• Lieutenant-Colonel Tim Spicer OBE: Chief Executive
• Mark Bullough: Director
• Jeffrey Day: Director
• Dominic Armstrong: Director
• Brigadier James Ellery CBE: Director
• David Miller: Finance Director
• The Hon. Nicholas Soames MP: Director (Non-executive)
• General Sir Roger Wheeler: GCB CBE: Director (Non-executive)
• Sir John Birch KCVO CMG: Director (Non-executive)
• Robert McFarlane: Director (Non-executive)

Former Directors

• John Davidson: Former Director, Operations
• Richard Slowe: Former Director (Non-executive)

Affiliations

• British Association of Private Security Companies
• Defence Manufacturers' Association
• British Expertise
• Private Security Company Association of Iraq

References, Resources and Contact

Resources

• Robert Baer, Iraq's Mercenary King, Vanity Fair, April 2007
• Alec Klein, For Security in Iraq, a Turn to British Know-How, Washington Post, 24 August 2007.
• Ewen MacAskill and Richard Norton-Taylor, Iraq's hired hands under fire as the pot of gold starts to run low, Guardian, 22 September 2007.
• The trophy videos as broadcast on More 4 TV