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06/06/2004:
"Mercenaries in 'coup plot' guarded UK officials in Iraq"
Shocked MP demands a rethink of the way government awards its security contracts. Special report by Antony Barnett, Solomon Hughes and Jason BurkeThe Observer
Mercenaries accused of planning a coup in an oil-rich African state also worked under contract for the British government providing security in Iraq, raising fears about the way highly sensitive security work is awarded, The Observer has learnt.
The Department for International Development (DfID) signed a £250,000 deal last summer with the South-African based Meteoric Tactical Solutions (MTS) to provide 'close protection' for department staff, including bodyguards and drivers for its senior official in Iraq.
Two of the firm's owners were arrested in Zimbabwe last March with infamous British mercenary and former SAS officer Simon Mann. The men are accused of plotting an armed coup in Equatorial Guinea.
MTS is based in Pretoria and run by former members of South African special forces. Its owners are Lourens 'Hecky' Horn, Hermanus Carlse and Festus van Rooyen. Horn, the firm's Iraq contact when the contract with Britain was signed, is now in Chikurubi prison in Zimbabwe with Carlse.
The pair appeared in court on 23 March accused of forming an advance party for the coup with Mann. It is alleged they arrived in the Zimbabwe to buy weapons for a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea. The trio tried to purchase 61 AK-47 rifles, 45,000 rounds of ammunition, 1,000 rounds of anti-tank ammunition and 160 grenades.
The weapons were allegedly to be used by 70 mercenaries planning an assault in Malabo, capital of Equatorial Guinea, to kidnap or kill President Obiang. But the arrested men claim they were just hired to guard diamond mines in the Congo.
Opposition MPs have been shocked by the scale of the Government's use of private security firms to guard British civil servants in Iraq.
The British-owned company Armor Group has an £876,000 contract to supply 20 guards for the Foreign Office. This will rise by 50 per cent in July. The firm employs about 500 Gurkhas to guard executives of US firms Bechtel and Kellogg Brown & Root.
The largest UK security firm in Iraq, Global Risk Strategies, is helping the Iraqi administration to draft new regulations. Its 1,000 staff there will rise to 1,200.
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, called on the government to review the way it awards security contracts. 'The disclosure [about Meteoric] raises serious questions as to what checks were carried out by the department before it hired them,' he said.
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