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.
Other politicians suggest the need for so many private security staff in Iraq highlights the potential overstretch in the British forces.
As well as their work for Britain, MTS guards Swiss diplomats and had two contracts to train the Iraqi police. Swiss politician Barbara Haering wants the South African mercenaries to be replaced with real soldiers. 'We would then have assurance they are under democratic control and trained to respect human rights,' she said.
MTS director Festus van Rooyen, who is based in Iraq, confirmed his company's contract with the department and the arrest of his former partners, but denied all knowledge of alleged wrongdoing. He claimed that MTS had worked for Nelson Mandela, Tony Blair and the Queen.
His fellow directors were on leave when they were arrested. 'I was shocked when I heard of their arrest. Activity like that is totally against company policy,' he said.
Horn was in charge of the company in Iraq, including the British contract, until last February when he returned to South Africa to 'chill out on a hunting farm'.
The presence of large numbers of South African mercenaries in Iraq has raised concerns, especially after some private guards were found to have dubious human rights records. Gray Branfield, who was killed while working for British security firm Hart Group in southern Iraq, had carried out many assassinations for the former apartheid regime.
Deon Gouws, who died while working in Iraq for British-led security firm Erinys, also carried out many killings in South Africa's secret wars. Francis Strydom, who was injured alongside Gouws, was a member of Koevoet, a paramilitary unit of South Africa's police with a record of killings and torture.
The Department for Overseas Development is also under fire for hiring international arms traffickers to fly aid missions, despite being warned their firm had been named as a sanctions buster by the United Nations.
Official documents obtained by The Observer reveal that the department hired this firm, Aerocom, to fly aid to Morocco following the earthquake there earlier this year. Aerocom was named in a UN report last year for breaking international sanctions by transporting huge quantities of arms to the war-torn West African state of Liberia in 2002.
The department's air-freight agent needed special permission from the UK Civil Aviation Authority to allow Aerocom's old Moldova-registered Ilyushin 67 transport plane to land in Britain. After receiving an exemption from noise restrictions, the plane loaded humanitarian supplies at Manston airfield in in Kent, and took off on 1 March.
The government had been warned about Aerocom when the Halo Trust, a respected British mine clearance charity, inadvertently hired the firm to fly equipment to Angola in March 2003. Concerns about the alleged record of Aerocom led the trust to seek Foreign Office advice. The FO gave no hint the flight should not proceed.
A department spokeswoman defended the way it awards contracts.'We check the financial and legal standing of potential contractors to ensure we deal with reputable companies,' she said.
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