UK private military firm hired ex-child soldiers from Sierra Leone for Iraq ops

by | Apr 18, 2016 | World at War | 0 comments

UK private military firm hired ex-child soldiers from Sierra Leone

Former child soldiers from Sierra Leone have been employed by a private British military company to provide security for American bases in Iraq as part of a 2,500-strong contingent hired for the job, a new Danish documentary has revealed.

According to investigation based on contract documents, UK’s Aegis Defense Services contracted by US Department of Defense employed some 2,500 mercenaries to provide security force for the Pentagon-administered Project and Contracting Office (PCO) in Iraq.

Part of the security force, according to a documentary, titled Børnesoldatens Nye Job (The Child Soldier’s New Job) included child soldiers from Sierra Leone who were paid only $16 a day.

 

“When war gets outsourced, then the company tries to find the cheapest soldiers globally. Turns out that that is former child soldiers from Sierra Leone. I think it is important that we in the West are aware of the consequences of the privatization of war,” said the film’s director, Mads Ellesøe, as quoted by the Guardian.

Aegis was hired by Washington starting from 2004 to provide security for American bases in Iraq. The firm initially employed British, American and Nepalese personnel to do the job. But from 2011, the firm started to employ fighters from Africa to cut costs.

James Ellery, who was a director of Aegis Defense Services between 2005 and 2015, acknowledged that Aegis recruited personnel from Sierra Leone because they were cheaper than Europeans. Yet he stressed that the UK firm has never bothered to check whether the security force had employed any former underage combatants.

While agreeing that it would have been better to recruit Brits, Ellery told the Guardian, that “it can’t be afforded… I’m afraid all we can afford now is Africans.”

 

Sierra Leone proved to be a perfect place for recruitment as the country had just emerged from the ashes of the atrocious civil war (1991-2002), tarnished with crimes against humanity and the widespread use of child soldiers to carry out the fighting.

Speaking with the British publication Ellery revealed that child soldiers cannot be prosecuted for war crimes under international law.

“They are, once they reach 18, in fact citizens with full rights to seek employment, which is a basic human right. So we would have been completely in error if, having gone to Sierra Leone, we excluded those people,” he explained.

One of the only things Aegis cared for was strict adherence to physical health requirements.

“The moment they [recruitment agents] start sending us people who are blind in one eye or have Aids, that’s it. Contract over,” Ellery said.“Because those sort of things, although they sound facetious, are big problems in Africa, because you don’t want people dying after you’ve put them through expensive training and then they die because they’ve got Aids and so on.”

Founded in 2002 by Tim Spicer, the former Scots Guards officer, notorious for supplying weapons in Sierra Leone to support the local government, Aegis Defense Services is now chaired by Sir Nicholas Soames, a Tory MP and a grandson of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

In 2015 the operations of Aegis were taken over by a Canadian security company, GardaWorld. Contacted by the Guardian into the alleged allegations in the documentary, Graham Binns, Aegis’s former CEO and GardaWorld’s senior managing director shifted the blame onto the contractor’s respected country of origin which provided the British company with their personnel.

“We worked very closely with our audited, vetted and authorised agents to recruit, vet and screen our professionals. Our agents were authorised [as was the employment of individuals] by the relevant national government of the countries from which we recruited,” he said.

The documentary shot in the US, UK, Sierra Leone and Uganda will be broadcasted on Denmark television on Monday, April 18.

The use of child soldiers became widespread during the civil war in Sierra Leone where the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), in addition to state forces and state-supported militias widely recruited children for combat. An estimated 10,000 children took part in the conflict. Some of the child soldiers were also girls, who had been reportedly subjected to repeated abuse and rape. Most children were required by their superiors to commit war crimes such as murders, rapes, sexual slavery, mutilations and other forms of human rights abuses.

Ceribalius

Ceribalius

Ceribalius is a pseudonym used by one of our writers, he/she is a digtial nomad and dedicated fighter of freedom and liberty. If there is something that needs saying which no one else is, he/she is the one to do it.
Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

All The World’s a Stage

'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances.' - William Shakespeare Reality...

This is a War, The Weapon is Fear and Their Enemy is You!

It's October, nine months since the pandemic began, nine months of ridiculous pseudoscience, deception and outright lies. This pandemic isn't...

Erdogan Slams French President Macron

Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has slammed France’s leader Emmanuel Macron, following French criticism about Turkish maritime...

Beirut Explosion – Is That The Sound Of Jets Flying Over-Head? – Video

A video which has allegedly been recovered from one of the victims mobile phone shows the two minutes leading up to the devastating explosion...

North Korea Blows Up Diplomatic Office As Tensions With South Korea Escalate

Tensions between North Korea and South Korea have escalated over the denuclearization talks between Pyongyang and the Trump administration. The...

Imminent War, Deadly Virus, Civil Unrest And a Whole Lot More to Come

I'll be honest, the past week I have felt a little like I've come up against a hard stop, mentally that it. With the sudden flick of the...

Who is Placing Piles of Bricks at Protests? – Ben Swann

As the riots rage on across the US, more and more pallets of Bricks have been spotted along major protest routes and sidewalks. Initially,...

Trump Orders Navy to Shoot Down Any Iranian Gunboats That Harass Them

President Donald Trump has tweeted in the past few hours that he has instructed the Navy to “destroy any and all” Iranian gunboats that harass...

Full Documentary | Psywar

Wars are being fought all the time, all over the World, but perhaps the biggest and most dangerous war for humanity, a war which is continually...

This will be the Greatest Wealth Transfer the World has Ever Seen

While fears of the coronavirus spread continue to shake the World, another pandemic is building in the background. What could be the greatest...

Stay Connected - Subscribe Today

Thank you for subscribing!

Pin It on Pinterest