Timothy Simon Spicer, (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 the founder of Sandline International, a private military company which closed in April 2004. Early life and military career 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. He tried to join the Special Air Service (SAS) prior to enlisting in the Scots Guards, but failed the entry course. In 1982, his regiment was pulled from guard duty at the Tower of London and sent to the Falklands War, where he saw action at the Battle of Mount Tumbledown on 13 June. After the Falklands War, Spicer, then at the rank of lieutenant colonel, was sent to Northern Ireland along with his regiment as part of Operation Banner during the Troubles. In 1992, Spicer was awarded the OBE "for operational service in Northern Ireland". On 4 September of that year, two soldiers under his command, Mark Wright and James Fisher, shot and killed an 18-year old Catholic teenage named Peter McBride in disputed circumstances. Immediately following the incident, Wright and Fisher were interviewed by Spicer and three other officers before they were interrogated by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). In his 1999 autobiography An Unorthodox Soldier, Spicer wrote that "I thought between us we could reach a balanced judgement on what happened." The two soldiers were subsequently tried via court-martial, which convicted them of murder and sentenced the pair to life imprisonment at HM Prison Maghaberry on 10 February 1995. At the court-martial, Wright and James claimed that they feared that McBride was about to throw an improvised explosive device he had hidden in a plastic bag towards them, a claim which Spicer supported (the bag was subsequently found to only contain a t-shirt). 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. The campaign successfully persuaded the British government to free the pair from HM Prison Maghaberry on 2 September 1998, after they had spent roughly three and