Costas Georgiou (; 1951 – 10 July 1976), also known by his alias Colonel Callan, was a Cypriot-born British mercenary executed in Angola following the Luanda Trial for activities during the civil war phase of the Angolan War of Independence. Early life Georgiou was born in Cyprus in 1951, when the island was a British Crown colony. His family moved to London in 1963. British military career Georgiou joined the British Army and served, at first with distinction, in 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment in Northern Ireland. He was credited as being one of the best marksmen in the unit. He later became involved with other paratroopers in an armed robbery on a Post Office on 18 February 1972. Georgiou was eventually sentenced to five years in prison. Despite later claiming to have been a colonel, Georgiou's highest British Army rank was that of corporal, and he never received officer training. Others state Georgiou was a private soldier. Mercenary activity Background: Roots of the conflict and Georgiou's recruitment In 1975, Portugal recognised the independence of its former colony of Angola, and acknowledged the Soviet-aligned People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) as the de jure government. The new government sought and received help in the form of Cuban military advisors, combat troops and material to fight against rival factions, which included the US-backed National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) and the South African-backed National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which received some US funding but no actual military aid. At the same time, British and American ex-military were recruited by the FNLA through private military companies (PMC; also known as PMIs, for Private Military Industry) in the United Kingdom and United States. Funding was provided by various NATO-member intelligence organisations, including the American CIA and the French SDECE. By this time, Georgiou was out of the army and working part-time in construction. He had few prospects for more stable and gainful employment, given his dishonourable discharge for his part in robbing a post office. He was dating a Greek Cypriot woman, Rona Angelo. Her cousin was 'Shotgun' Charlie Christodoulou, like Costas an ex-paratrooper of Greek Cypriot extraction, but honourably discharged. An acquaintance, Nick Hall, another dishonourably discharged airborne veteran, took the initiative of putting out an advertisement soliciting mercenary employment for four able-bodied young men. These would be Hall himself, Georgiou, Christodoulou and Costas's old comrade Mick