Tim Spicer
| Tim Spicer | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1952 (age 64–65) Aldershot, England |
| Service/branch | British Armed Forces |
| Years of service | 1970 – 1994 |
| Rank | Lieutenant-Colonel |
| Unit | Scots Guards |
| Battles/wars |
Falklands War 1991 Gulf War UN force in Bosnia Working for Private Military Companies: Bougainville Uprising Sierra Leone Civil War Iraq War |
| Awards |
Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) General Service Medal South Atlantic Medal |
| Other work | worked for a number of private military corporations including Sandline International and Aegis Defence Services |
With the UK's Scots Guard:
Timothy Simon "Tim" Spicer, OBE (born 1952) is a former British Army officer, and former chief executive officer of the private security company Aegis Defence Services. He is a veteran of the Falklands War and also served with the British Army in Northern Ireland. He became well known as an employee of Sandline International, a private military company which closed in April 2004.
Born in 1952 in Aldershot, England, Spicer attended Sherborne School and followed his father into the British Army, attending Sandhurst and then joining the Scots Guards. He tried to join the Special Air Service (SAS), but failed the entry course. In 1982, his unit was pulled from Tower of London guard duty and sent to the Falklands War where he saw action at the Battle of Mount Tumbledown.
On 4 September 1992, during the Troubles, two soldiers of the Scots Guards under Lieutenant Colonel Spicer's command, Guardsmen Mark Wright and James Fisher, shot a civilian in the back in Belfast, Northern Ireland. At the subsequent trial, it was heard that 18-year-old Peter McBride, who died at the scene, had been unarmed and not a threat. Immediately following the shooting, the guardsmen were interviewed by Spicer along with three other officers before they were interviewed by police. Spicer later wrote "I thought between us we could reach a balanced judgement on what happened" Spicer maintains the same version of events as Wright and Fisher, to wit, that the soldiers believed McBride was about to throw a coffee jar bomb contained in a plastic bag he was carrying. despite the fact that McBride had been searched moments earlier by members of the same patrol. The bag was subsequently found to contain only a T-shirt. Spicer defended his soldiers even after a jury convicted them of murder and the judge sentenced them both to life imprisonment on 10 February 1995. Spicer argued that in the conditions applicable to the incident, Wright and Fisher had legitimately believed their lives to be in peril. Spicer was involved in a successful lobbying campaign which contributed to the British Government's decision to free Wright and Fisher from Maghaberry Prison on 2 September 1998. Each had served one week less than three years seven months in prison for the murder. They were then flown to Catterick barracks in Yorkshire to meet their commanding officer. The following month the Army Board decided that both men could return to their unit and continue their careers in the British Army. The pair subsequently fought in the Iraq War. In the same year that Fisher and Wright shot McBride, Lt. Col Spicer was awarded the OBE "for operational service in Northern Ireland".
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