Justice Ministry spokesman Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar said the trial of Danny Fitzsimons, which had been expected to begin Sunday, has been delayed because the venue is being moved to another building.

The Justice Ministry’s main complex in downtown Baghdad was destroyed in a bombing last month, and Barykdar said the ministry is now moving its offices temporarily into a court building in western Baghdad where the trial was to be held.

Barykdar said all cases scheduled for the courthouse “have been postponed until further notice.” He could not say when Fitzsimons’ trial would begin.

Fitzsimons is accused of shooting two colleagues, a Briton and an Australian, during a fight in Baghdad’s Green Zone this summer and then wounding an Iraqi while fleeing. All three men were working for the British security firm ArmorGroup Iraq.

Fitzsimons would be the first Westerner to face an Iraqi trial since a U.S.-Iraqi security pact that took effect Jan. 1 lifted immunity for foreign contractors.

Iraqi authorities had pressed for the lifting of immunity after a September 2007 shooting in Baghdad involving another security firm, North Carolina-based Blackwater Worldwide, now known as Xe. That shooting left as many as 17 Iraqi civilians dead.

Fitzsimons’ family and supporters have said that they are worried about whether he can receive a fair trial in Iraq and have called for him to be returned to Britain.

Efforts to bring a security guard facing the death penalty in Iraq back to Britain are intensifying, his lawyer has said.

BBC NEWS

Danny Fitzsimons, 33, is being held over the alleged shooting of two colleagues in Baghdad’s Green Zone.

Briton Paul McGuigan and Australian Darren Hoare were killed on 9 August.

John Tipple, lawyer for the ex-soldier from Middleton, Greater Manchester, said the case was too serious to be handled by an “unstable regime”.

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 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.”