The Italian Foreign Ministry has apparently engaged Tim Spicer’s Aegis Defence Services to protect its staff in southern Iraq.
As a result, Aegis was the subject of a 20 minute documentary being broadcast on Rainews24 today and yesterday. Journalist Maurizio Torrealta visited London to interview Craig Murray, Paul Collins of War on Want and myself, while one of his colleagues spoke to Jean Mc Bride and Paul O’Connor of the Pat Finucane Centre in Belfast.
The documentary Affari Di Guerra is currently available in Italian on the RAI website. I’m told that there will be an English version at some stage.
"Inchieste" of Rainews24 edited by Maurizio Torrealta presents:
"WAR BUSINESS"
By Flaviano Masella, Mario Sanna, Angelo Saso, Maurizio Torrealta
A car full of armed men travels at high speed on an Iraqi road. When another car tries to pass it, a machine gun appears from the window of the first car and it starts shooting a burst of machine-gun fire until the second car stops. The operation recurs more and more times, on the road side an increasing number of cars and wounded people stand still. They are the "contractors" of "Aegis", the British company, who try to defend themselves from the risk of possible attacks. The video has been broadcast by the British tv station Channel 4 with the comment of a former Aegis soldier.
The "task force Iraq" of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs will deploy Aegis to defend the technicians and the Italian aid workers in Nassiriya with a contract of about 3.348 million Euros.
"But why has the Italian Government chosen this company?", wonders the mother of a 19 -year old boy killed in Belfast in 1992 by two soldiers under the command of Tim Spicer, who is now at the top of Aegis. "If this is what Tom Spicer did here in Belfast in the Nineties, what could he do in Iraq where there is no rule of law, the tribunals do not work, the police does not exist and where he is the commander of armed people?
The report also refers to the accusations against Aegis for the violation of the UN arm embargo in 1998 when Spicer sent 35 tons of Bulgarian weapons to Sierra Leone where he intervened as the head of a group of mercenaries in exchange of a licence to exploit diamond mines.
The report also refers to the accusations for another scandal against the head of Aegis, Tim Spicer, when he tried to intervene leading a group of mercenaries against the rebels of the isalnds of Bouganville.
A company in the "war business" that many US outstanding politicians such as Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama and Ted Kennedy oppose.
Why didn’t the Italian Foreign minister choose other "contractors" that were already operating in the south? Why did he decide to use Aegis? the officials of the Foreign Ministry deny any comment, because first of all they will have to answer to the questions in Parliament about this issue.
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