Timothy Simon Spicer, OBE (born 1952) is a former British Army officer, and former CEO of the private security company Aegis Defence Services.
[5] Born in 1952 in Aldershot, England, Spicer was educated at Sherborne School and followed his father into the British Army, attending Sandhurst and then enlisted in the Scots Guards.
[7] On 4 September of that year, two soldiers under his command, Mark Wright and James Fisher, shot and killed an 18-year old Catholic teenager named Peter McBride in disputed circumstances.
[9] In reaction to their conviction, Spicer organised a lobbying campaign to free Wright and James, arguing that the two had legitimately believed that their lives were in imminent danger due to McBride's actions.
[10][11] Wright and James were flown to Catterick Garrison in Yorkshire to meet Spicer, where they stayed until the Army Board decided to reinstate them into the Scots Guards a month later; the pair subsequently served in the Iraq War.
[13] When employed by Sandline International, Spicer was involved in military operations in the Sierra Leone Civil War, which included importing weapons in apparent violation of the United Nations arms embargo.
However, former British diplomat Craig Murray claims that he was present at a Foreign office meeting when Spicer was explicitly read the text of UN Security Council Resolution 1132 which obliges member states to prevent their nationals from importing arms to Sierra Leone.
In fact, Lt. Col. Spicer said that six weeks before the arms-to-Africa affair blew up, Sandline had submitted a paper to the Foreign Office calling for greater regulation, but had not yet received a response.
[citation needed] Spicer was Chief Executive of Aegis Defence Services, a PMC based in London, until replaced by Major General Graham Binns in 2010.
Just don't call him a mercenary.In 2005, following the award of this contract, five United States Senators – Charles Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd and John Kerry – wrote a joint letter[22] calling on Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld to investigate the granting of the Aegis contract, describing Spicer as "an individual with a history of supporting excessive use of force against a civilian population" and stating that he "vigorously defends [human rights abuses]".
Obama wrote that "The CEO of Aegis Defense Services Tim Spicer has been implicated in a variety of human rights abuses around the globe ... given his history, I agree that the United States should consider rescinding its contract with his company.