Paratrooper turned security guard Daniel Fitzsimons tells of night in Baghdad that left him accused of shooting dead two men

By Martin Chulov

The British security guard facing the death penalty in Baghdad says he can remember little about the night he is accused of shooting dead two colleagues, except that things “went really, really bad, really quickly”.

Former paratrooper Daniel Fitzsimons, 33, says he is haunted by the faces of Briton Paul McGuigan, and Australian Darren Hoare, who were both shot dead near a bar inside the compound of the British security company ArmorGroup in the early hours of 9 August.

“I have sat here trying to think through the whys and the wherefores,” Fitzsimons told the Guardian in his first interview since then. “I see Paul and Darren’s faces every night before I sleep and every morning when I wake up.”

Fitzsimons is the first foreign national charged under Iraqi law since the 2003 invasion. “The only two people who can tell me what happened that night are both dead. All I know is that it went really, really bad, really quickly,” he said.

From his prison cell in the heavily fortified Green Zone, Fitzsimons said he had been given a job with ArmorGroup after being unemployed for 13 months from the time he left prison in England where he had served a seven-month sentence.

“This was to be a new start for me,” he said. “For the week before I came out here I hadn’t touched a drop of drink. I was on the dole and I wanted my life back. I had my bags packed four weeks early.

“When I landed in Baghdad I was over the moon. I was buzzing.”

Fitzsimons had returned to Iraq for a fifth tour as a security contractor in three years, a job he says was more gruelling and traumatic than the eight years he served with 2 Parachute Regiment.

The incident has again cast the spotlight on the private security industry in Iraq – an industry that continues to thrive despite the unease of the government and widespread distrust among Iraqi people who have traditionally viewed contractors as an unaccountable adjunct to the occupying military.

Leading security providers have recently been accused of lowering employment standards for prospective guards and in some cases barely vetting them at all.

Fitzsimons paints a disturbing picture of life as a contractor in Baghdad, saying it has left him mentally scarred. Claiming to be aggrieved by media coverage, which he said portrayed him as unbalanced, he said: “I saw more contacts in eight weeks at one point than I had during eight years with the army.

“We were ambushed in south Baghdad once by small arms and we made it through. I won’t lie to you, I did enjoy it though. There’s nothing nice about seeing limbs blown off. The smell of flesh stayed with me all the time and I couldn’t taste my food for a couple of weeks, but the buzz was unreal. There is nothing else like that.

“We were doing the Basra to Mosul run weekly and we were all around the bad areas north of Baghdad, like Taji and Samara. I lost three different team leaders to injury. Guys were getting malleted all the time.”

Fitzsimons said he had spiralled out of control after returning to Baghdad. “Things just went absolutely pear-shaped and I don’t know why. My heart goes out to both their families. All our lives are ruined. It’s an absolute tragedy.”

Fitzsimons refused to discuss the specifics of his case, which could see him face the death penalty or life imprisonment. Iraqi authorities have not yet decided under which law they will charge him. They are expected to make a decision imminently on whether they will accuse him of premeditated murder – a conviction would likely mean the death penalty.

To proceed with any murder charges, the Iraqi legal system must first receive a complaint from either of the two victims’ families.

An Iraqi whom Fitzsimons is accused of shooting and severely wounding at the same time is planning to register a complaint in a Baghdad court on Sunday, meaning Fitzsimons will face an attempted murder charge at least.

Fitzsimons’s British lawyers, John Tipple and Nick Wrack, are due to return to London today after instructing local counsel. They will step up efforts to have him extradited to the UK under an unused extradition provision in the Iraqi legal code that dates back to the 1930s.

“We are not going to let the British government hang him out to dry,” said Tipple. “He is a British national and the right place for him to be tried, if at all, is at home.”

By Michael Gillard (The Sunday Times)

Armed and very drunk, Daniel Fitzsimons was intent on showing off to his fellow private security guards based at Baghdad airport. It was two o’clock one morning in January last year and, although he was unwounded, Fitzsimons had acquired a cocktail of Valium and morphine.

“I saw him put 300mg of Valium and 40mg of morphine into his leg in quick succession,” claimed one of those who was present. “Most of us would be sleeping the sleep of the dead after that. Danny was just getting angrier.”

Two of the other guards had to restrain him while a medic gave him enough drugs to sedate him.

When Fitzsimons, 29, sobered up, Olive Group, his British employer, sacked him. The former Parachute Regiment sniper was not overly concerned. He had been sacked by Aegis, a similar company, the year before and he knew that in the lucrative loose world of private security he could soon get another job.

Danny Fitzsimons

Despite his drunkenness, drug abuse and instability, Fitzsimons arrived back in Iraq earlier this month as a security guard for ArmorGroup, a private firm that has a Foreign Office contract to train the Iraqi police. Within 36 hours, during a late-night vodka-fuelled session in Baghdad’s green zone, he allegedly shot dead two colleagues and wounded an Iraqi employee while fleeing the scene.

One of the dead men was Paul McGuigan, a 37-year-old former Royal Marine who was just weeks away from becoming a father again; the other victim was Darren Hoare, an Australian father of three.

Fitzsimons may face the death penalty if convicted of premeditated murder. His legal team flew out today carrying the hopes of his family in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, that the British government will pressure the Iraqi authorities to allow a trial in Britain.

John Tipple, his legal caseworker, said his client is suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of “the horrors” he witnessed through active service in the British Army and as a “mercenary” in Iraq.

Liz Fitzsimons, his stepmother, said: “It was almost as if he was two people. There was a lovely side to Daniel, then he could flip.”

For all the claims of PTSD, a disturbing picture is emerging of Fitzsimons’s violent past – one that calls into question whether the multi-billion-pound security industry is more concerned about profits than safe procedures.

FITZSIMONS joined the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers in 1996, aged 16, and went on to do two tours of the former Yugoslavia. There, family and friends suggest, he was traumatised by discovering in a freezer the mutilated body of a young boy he had befriended in Kosovo. Whether the incident is true is hard to establish: accounts of where it might have happened are confused.

In 2000 he transferred to the Parachute Regiment, based at Colchester barracks in Essex. He was sent to Northern Ireland and Macedonia and served in Afghanistan in 2002.

Around this time his parents noticed a change in his personality with “mood swings, agitation and a propensity towards violence, including to his own family”. While in the UK he was convicted of possessing an offensive weapon and two episodes of criminal damage.

It appears there was more to his troubles than the horrors of war. By 2004 he had fallen in with Andy “Nightmare” Frain, one of Britain’s most notorious extreme right-wing football hooligans, who belonged to a gang known as the Chelsea Headhunters.

According to Tipple, who represented Fitzsimons, he was attracted to the buzz of hooliganism. His lawyers commissioned a psychiatric report which concluded that Fitzsimons was suffering from an “adjustment disorder” – but not PTSD.

Although acquitted by a jury, Fitzsimons was almost immediately in trouble with his regiment for failing a compulsory drug test. He was discharged in February 2005.

After nearly nine years in the army, he struggled to cope with civilian life. “It was as though he was at war with the world and that included his family,” said Liz Fitzsimons. The anger was mainly directed at his father, who sometimes received “awful letters” and “horrendous text messages” from his son.

They were aware that he took drugs but did not know of his involvement with the Chelsea Headhunters. Her stepson, she said, was “very intense in his beliefs. He developed a very black-and-white view of things and was not happy if people didn’t agree with him”.

In 2006 Fitzsimons turned to the world of private security in Iraq. By then an influx of firms and wannabe soldiers of fortune had driven down wages and standards.

“As the money has gone down, the calibre of guys prepared to do it has gone down significantly,” a British defence contractor said last week.

Fitzsimons was part of what one veteran Para called a “third wave” of recruits in Iraq that threw professional ex-soldiers together with “pub doormen, skinheads, hooligans and Walter Mittys”.

Fitzsimons returned home with more gory stories about fallen colleagues but also with money in his pocket, which he spent taking friends on holiday to Ibiza. His online postings on Facebook spoke of a man fighting the “war inside your head”, but also enjoying “getting wasted” on drugs to escape reality.

“He liked a good time,” said his stepmother. “He was no angel, by a long chalk. We are now wondering whether a lot of this behaviour was PTSD.”

Steve Wood, a friend and neighbour, also suggests he was mentally disturbed. Wood, 29, recalled one occasion when they were watching a film and Fitzsimons suddenly stood up and shouted, “Para down! Cover fire!”

There were also incidents of simple thuggery and violence. In 2007 and 2008 Fitzsimons received further convictions for battery, robbery and possession of ammunition without a certificate. In January he was charged with a racially aggravated assault against three Asian men with whom he got into an altercation on a train in Manchester.

His lawyers commissioned another psychiatric report; it was inconclusive about whether Fitzsimons was suffering from PTSD.

Even if he was haunted by the horrors of war, he was drawn back to them. Knowing that he had to appear in court later this month on assault charges, Fitzsimons applied to ArmorGroup for a new contract in Iraq. He flew to Baghdad on Friday, August 7.

“He was excited,” Wood recalled. “He said, ‘I can’t do civvy life, that’s all I know’.”

Within 36 hours of dumping his kit bag in the green zone, Fitzsimons was drunk and two men were dead.

ArmorGroup, citing the impending trial, would not say what background checks it had carried out on Fitzsimons before hiring him. In a statement the firm merely said: “ArmorGroup undertakes extensive research into the suitability of individuals that it employs in Iraq.”

Michael Clark, a medic and security contractor who had worked with Fitzsimons, said: “Danny should never have gone back to Iraq, but this industry has no regulation and no duty of care to its employees.”

A former ArmorGroup operative in Iraq said: “You could have turned up with a wooden leg, a hook on your arm and a patch on your eye. The old saying of ‘Bums on seats’ – that’s what it is all about.”

THE Ministry of Defence recognises the danger of combat-related PTSD and has in place “decompression” programmes for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan so they can start disgorging their traumatic experiences before returning home. In general, private security companies do not, although ArmorGroup says it has “an active stress-management system” for its employees in Iraq.

Whether or not Fitzsimons had PTSD, or was just a violent thug, his case highlights the dangers. A former British special forces commander with experience of private military companies said: “They need to learn from the army and understand and preempt the problems. These men are out there untreated and in denial.”

Fitzsimons’s legal team says he was finally diagnosed in June with PTSD and is unlikely to have a fair trial in Iraq. But the director of public prosecutions is understood to believe the UK has “no jurisdiction” to intervene. Last week an Iraqi legal expert suggested there was no alternative to a trial in Iraq. “All crimes committed on Iraqi territory will be tried in Iraq, by the Iraqi courts of justice, without exception,” he said.

However, the expert also said that it is not definite that Fitzsimons would receive a death sentence if found guilty: “The court will take into consideration the circumstances and [he] could receive a prison sentence. If the court sees that a death sentence should be his punishment, then only the family of the victims can intervene.”

Those relatives are distraught. McGuigan’s fiancée has urged the Iraqi authorities to release his body for burial as soon as possible. “My dread is that I have to bury him close to the birth of his child,” she said.

Damian McCarthy, her barrister and an employment lawyer who represents soldiers, said: “What happened to Paul McGuigan was entirely predictable. Fitzsimons was an accident waiting to happen. What you don’t do with someone who may have PTSD is give them a gun and allow them to work alongside others in a stressful environment.”

Additional reporting: Hala Jaber, Stephen Armstrong

The security circuit

Private security companies (PSCs) operating in Iraq: 32

Foreign security contractors in Iraq: 132,000

Foreign security contractors killed since Iraq invasion: 520

Amount PSCs have earned from the Foreign Office since 2006: £148m

Highest-earning company in Iraq and Afghanistan: ArmorGroup, with more than £68m since early 2007

Other British PSCs in Iraq include: Hart Group; Aegis; Control Risks Group; Olive Group and Erinys

UK armed forces reported in 2008 with mental “adjustment disorder”: 1,141

UK armed forces reported in 2008 with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): 155

Percentage of UK prison population that are armed forces veterans: 9%, many with PTSD

No overall figures kept for veterans suffering from PTSD

Most serious incident: two years ago in September, private security contractors working for Blackwater, the American firm, were accused of firing at random into a crowd of Iraqis in Nisour Square, Baghdad, causing the deaths of 17 civilians. Blackwater insists its guards were returning fire against armed insurgents. A court case is proceeding

By Terri Judd and Tom Peck at The Independent

The private security industry regulator has promised to tighten vetting practices after The Independent revealed that the man accused of shooting dead two fellow security contractors in Iraq had a long history of psychiatric illness, was awaiting trial for assault and had previously been sacked by another private security company.

The Government has recently held a six-month consultation into the multi-million dollar private security industry – which boomed in the early days of the Iraq conflict leading to concerns about the number of unregulated companies – and is expected to report back later this year, recommending self regulation with international cooperation to raise standards.

Andy Bearpark, the director general of the British Association of Private Security Companies (BAPSC) said one of the matters being considered was vetting procedures. “This case will draw this review into sharp focus,” he said. “At the moment every company has different procedures. Common sense tells us that there should be standard procedure.”

Mr Fitzsimons, 29, who is currently facing charges of murder and execution if found guilty, is as much a victim as the dead men, say his family, because he had documented psychiatric problems following combat duties with the British Army. He had also had a criminal record and been sacked for “extreme negligence” by Aegis, another security company.

ArmorGroup, the company who hired Mr Fitzsimons, said in a statement yesterday that it would not comment on individual cases but maintained that it has, “strong vetting and screening policy and processes in place”. It claims that these procedures include: “Assessing applicants’ backgrounds and likely resilience to stress in the recruiting process to ensure that those employed will be resilient on account of prior active service and an independent medical report that candidates are obliged to provide.”

Mr Fitzsimons’s family feel that a screening policy should have prevented him from being hired by ArmorGroup. His stepmother said: “He shouldn’t have been allowed back into a warzone in the state of mind he was in.”

Mr Bearpark argues that a greater level of cooperation between companies, in this competitive industry, is needed. “We have suggested if companies do not want to deal directly, BAPSC could provide a central register,” he said. While the association currently has a charter, this latest review is likely to lead to the formation of a detailed code of conduct. “The private security industry is essential if the UK is to play its role in reconstruction of fragile states such as Afghanistan and Iraq. BAPSC was formed to ensure that standards in all areas were raised and that the very best practices were used by the industry generally. We have worked with the British Government since our formation in 2005 to ensure that this is the case,” he added.

A Foreign Office spokesman said that self regulation looked like the most likely option. “Given the activities of UK private military and security companies overseas, often in countries with weak legal systems and where it would be difficult to collect reliable evidence and witnesses, there would be problems investigating and enforcing any breach of regulation such as a licensing regime.

“We believe self-regulation through the industry association in conjunction with international cooperation to raise standards is more likely to achieve the desired outcome, namely, to improve standards of conduct by security companies internationally, and reduce the risk that a UK company breaches international standards.”