UK firm sued by ex-child soldiers recruited to serve in Iraq

Two former child soldiers have threatened legal action against a UK security firm which hired them as mercenaries in Iraq, reported the Guardian.

Their solicitor told the paper that the two men who were under 13 when they were recruited as child soldiers in Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war were hired to work as security guards for Aegis Defence Services in Iraq as adults.

They alleged to have endured psychological harm and suffered after the British security company recruited them to serve in Iraq.

In their letter sent before action to Aegis they claimed that experiences in Iraq compounded the psychological harm they had already suffered in childhood.

The two men’s solicitor, Rebekah Read of Leigh Day, added: “We thought they reflected a good example of the injustices that probably most of the men who were former child soldiers in Iraq have suffered from.”

Speaking to the Guardian the former senior director at Aegis defended the practice of hiring personnel from Sierra Leone, saying the company had a “duty” to recruit there because they were cheaper than Europeans. It would have been “quite wrong” to check if they had been child soldiers as this would penalise people for doing jobs they had been forced to do.

However, Chi Onwurah, a Labour MP and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Africa, said: “There’s an inherent racism in paying security guards less depending on the country they are coming from when they are facing the same risks as a guard from the UK.”