Colleagues 'haunt' accused guard

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Former paratrooper Daniel Fitzsimons, 33, is accused of pulling a gun and shooting fellow British private security guard Paul McGuigan, 37, and Australian Darren Hoare, 37, after a drink-fuelled row in a bar inside a compound in Baghdad in the early hours of August 9.

Fitzsimons, originally from Rochdale, Lancs, and the two other men were all working for the British private security firm ArmorGroup.

"I have sat here trying to think through the whys and the wherefores," Fitzsimons told The Guardian newspaper in his first interview since the incident.

"I see Paul and Darren's faces every night before I sleep and every morning when I wake up. The only two people who can tell me what happened that night are both dead. All I know is that it went really, really bad, really quickly."

Fitzsimons, who gave the interview from his prison cell in the heavily fortified Green Zone, said he had got his job with ArmorGroup after being unemployed for 13 months when he finished a seven-month jail sentence in England.

Fitzsimons had pulled a flare gun on children and fired it into the air to scare them off at his home in Middleton, Greater Manchester. He was also convicted of a public order offence over the incident, on April 1 this year, and had yet to be sentenced at Bolton Crown Court.

He was already serving a suspended sentence handed down by a court last November for firearms offences after being found in possession of prohibited ammunition - believed to be 5.5mm tapered Nato issue bullets.

Family and friends have said Fitzsimons is suffering mental torment from the things he witnessed while serving eight years in the British army, including tours of duty during the Balkans conflict and in Iraq.

The job in Iraq was supposed to be a "new start" he told the newspaper. Fitzsimons refused to discuss the specifics of his case, which could see him face the death penalty or life imprisonment under Iraqi law. His lawyers, John Tipple and Nick Wrack, are attempting to have him extradited back to the UK to face any charges.