By Martin Chulov in Baghdad for Guardian.co.uk

Lawyers for Daniel Fitzsimons, the British security contractor accused of shooting dead two colleagues in Baghdad, have asked for him to be moved to a psychiatric unit in an attempt to head off a murder trial that could lead to a death sentence.

Fitzsimons, a former paratrooper, was taken to Baghdad’s central criminal court today for a pre-trial hearing in which several witnesses were due to testify that he had been involved in the late night shooting in the city’s international zone in August. But the case was unexpectedly adjourned until 15 November after a lawyer for one of the victims asked for more time to prepare his case.

Several minutes before the trial was due to begin, Fitzsimons met his lawyer, the high-profile Iraqi legal figure Tareq Harb, for the first time. His pre-trial briefing amounted to a five-minute conversation outside the court room and a phone call to his UK-based solicitor, John Tipple.Harb said the court was obliged to agree to his request to move Fitzsimons to a psychiatric unit in Baghdad’s Rashad Hospital, where he will be evaluated by three psychiatrists. He is understood to have been treated in the UK for a psychological condition.

The trial was adjourned until November 15. Before the hearing,Earlier, Judge Saad Dawoud Suleiman, who will preside over the case – the first of its kind since full judicial rights were handed back to Iraqi authorities on 30 June – said Fitzsimons would face a death penalty if convicted.

“This is a very serious case,” he said in his chambers inside the fortified court house on the edge of the international zone. “The death penalty is on the statutes for such a crime.”

An official from the British embassy in Baghdad was at the court, as was a representative from ArmorGroup, which had contracted Fitzsimons to return to Iraq for a third tour as a security contractor several weeks before the alleged incident. An Iraqi guard who was wounded in the alleged attack, in which Briton Paul McGuigan and Australian Darren Hoare were killed, was also present, along with members of his family.

In the hours after the shooting, Fitzsimons signed a statement allegedly confessing to the shootings. But today he told the Guardian he could not remember the night of the shooting and planned to withdraw the confession. “I was under the influence of the drugs they gave me at the time,” he said. “I don’t remember a thing.”

Iraqi investigators say in the hours before the shooting, McGuigan and Hoare had gone to Fitzsimons’s room in the ArmorGroup compound and provoked him. They claim the pair had then sat with Fitzsimons, who had been drinking. Shortly afterwards a violent row allegedly erupted.

The prisoner advocacy group Reprieve is now also lobbying for Fitzsimons, whom and his UK legal team want him extradited to the UKhome to stand trial.

“Reprieve are now formally part of the UK legal team,” said Tipple. “They are playing a proactive role and taking it very seriously.”

Iraq has indicated it will take a tough stance with Fitzsimons, who is the first foreign national to be tried under Iraqi law since the American military withdrew to its bases in June. Senior officials have so far indicated they will not agree to any extradition request.However, Mr Harb said yesterday that the Central Criminal Court is obligated to agree to his request to move Mr Fitzsimons to a psychiatric unit in Baghdad’s Rashad Hospital, where he will be evaluated by three psychiatrists. He is understood to have been treated in the UK for a psychological condition.

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