BAGHDAD — A British private security contractor was taken into custody by Iraqi authorities in Baghdad’s Green Zone on Sunday after he fatally shot two colleagues, Iraqi officials said.
The gunman, identified as Danny Fitzsimons, also shot an Iraqi as he attempted to flee the compound where the shootings occurred, according to Iraqi officials and two other sources familiar with the incident. The Iraqi man was critically wounded, said Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a spokesman at Iraq’s Interior Ministry.
The case could mark the first time a foreign security contractor faces trial in Iraq in a homicide case.
“I can confirm the deaths of two ArmorGroup Iraq employees in the early hours of this morning in a firefight incident,” company spokesman Patrick Toyne-Sewell said in an e-mail.
He identified the slain men as Paul McGuigan, a Briton, and Darren Hoare, an Australian.
Toyne-Sewell said the two men’s relatives had been notified. Khalaf said Fitzsimons got into a dispute with colleagues as they were drinking.
U.S. soldiers took Fitzsimons into custody shortly after the shootings and promptly turned him over to Iraqi officials.
The compound where the shootings occurred is controlled by the Research Triangle Institute, a North Carolina- based organization. Two U.S.- funded nonprofit groups, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, are based there. Most foreign contractors were exempt from prosecution under Iraqi law until Jan. 1, when a security agreement between Iraq and the United States replaced the United Nations resolution that had given them broad immunity.
