Costas Georgiou
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Costas Georgiou (; 21 December 1951 – 10 July 1976), also known by his alias Colonel Callan, was a Cypriot-born British court-martialled-soldier-turned-
mercenary A mercenary is a private individual who joins an armed conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any other official military. Mercenaries fight for money or other forms of payment rather t ...
who was executed in
Angola Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country on the west-Central Africa, central coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Portuguese-speaking world, Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) country in both total area and List of c ...
following the Luanda Trial for activities during the civil war phase of the
Angolan War of Independence The Angolan War of Independence (; 1961–1974), known as the Armed Struggle of National Liberation (Portuguese: ''Luta Armada de Libertação Nacional'') in Angola, was a war of independence fought between the Angolan nationalist forces ...
.


Early life

Georgiou was born in
Cyprus Cyprus (), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Situated in West Asia, its cultural identity and geopolitical orientation are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the List of isl ...
in 1951, when the island was a British
Crown colony A Crown colony or royal colony was a colony governed by Kingdom of England, England, and then Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain or the United Kingdom within the English overseas possessions, English and later British Empire. There was usua ...
. 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 The 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment (1 PARA), is a special forces battalion of the British Army's Parachute Regiment. Along with various other regiments and corps from across the British Armed Forces, it is part of Special Forces Support G ...
in Northern Ireland. He was credited as one of the unit's best
marksmen A marksman is a person who is skilled in precision shooting. In modern military usage this typically refers to the use of projectile weapons such as an accurized scoped long gun such as designated marksman rifle (or a sniper rifle) to shoot at ...
. Georgiou has been implicated as one of the participants in the Bloody Sunday massacre. During a hearing in 2000, a witness said he had fired 26 shots into the crowd. In early 1972, Georgiou and three other paratroopers, Privates Cyril Verbeck, Stephen Peter Kirby, and Michael Wainhouse, carried out an armed robbery at a
Post Office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...
. All four men were court-martialled. Georgiou and Wainhouse were both found guilty and each eventually sentenced to five years in prison. Despite later claiming to have been a
colonel Colonel ( ; abbreviated as Col., Col, or COL) is a senior military Officer (armed forces), officer rank used in many countries. It is also used in some police forces and paramilitary organizations. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, a colon ...
, Georgiou's highest British Army rank was that of
corporal Corporal is a military rank in use by the armed forces of many countries. It is also a police rank in some police services. The rank is usually the lowest ranking non-commissioned officer. In some militaries, the rank of corporal nominally corr ...
, and he never received
officer An officer is a person who has a position of authority in a hierarchical organization. The term derives from Old French ''oficier'' "officer, official" (early 14c., Modern French ''officier''), from Medieval Latin ''officiarius'' "an officer," fro ...
training. Others state Georgiou was a private soldier.


Mercenary activity


Background: Roots of the conflict and Georgiou's recruitment

In 1975,
Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...
recognised the independence of its former colony of Angola, and acknowledged the Soviet-aligned People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (
MPLA The People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (, abbr. MPLA), from 1977–1990 called the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola – Labour Party (), is an Angolan social democratic political party. The MPLA fought against the P ...
) as the ''
de jure In law and government, ''de jure'' (; ; ) describes practices that are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms, regardless of whether the practice exists in reality. The phrase is often used in contrast with '' de facto'' ('from fa ...
'' 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 The National Front for the Liberation of Angola (; abbreviated FNLA) is a political party and former militant organisation that fought for Angolan independence from Portugal in the war of independence, under the leadership of Holden Roberto. F ...
(FNLA) and the South African-backed National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (
UNITA The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (, abbr. UNITA) is the second-largest political party in Angola. Founded in 1966, UNITA fought alongside the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Liberat ...
), 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 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...
-member intelligence organisations, including the American
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
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 Greek Cypriots (, ) are the ethnic Greek population of Cyprus, forming the island's largest ethnolinguistic community. According to the 2023 census, 719,252 respondents recorded their ethnicity as Greek, forming almost 99% of the 737,196 Cypri ...
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 Wainhouse. The men received a prompt reply from "Dr." Donald Belford, a former British Army medic who had volunteered for a humanitarian aid group in Africa some years before. While there, he had treated several Angolan fighters wounded in the struggle against the Portuguese, earning their friendship and trust. One of his friends was
Holden Roberto Álvaro Holden Necaca Roberto Diasiwa (Angolan ; January 12, 1923 – August 2, 2007) was an Angolan politician who founded and led the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) from 1962 to 1999. Early life Son of Roberto Garcia Diasiwa an ...
, leader of the FNLA. After independence, Belford became Roberto's official emissary in the United Kingdom.


Georgiou in Angola

Georgiou was now using the ''nom de guerre'' "Colonel Tony Cullen" – the surname of a former army friend and not, as mistakenly alleged by some journalists, inspired by the TV espionage series ''Callan''. He went to Angola to work as an unpaid medical orderly, in advance of his three colleagues. It was while he was working in this position that he took part in the decisive action that brought him to the notice of the FNLA leadership. When FNLA soldiers fled the advance of a MPLA force, which threatened to capture the hospital to which he was assigned, Georgiou, and longtime Irish colleague Lyndon Sheehan, led a handful of Portuguese FNLA soldiers in an offensive defence, stopping the MPLA force in its tracks. The general trend of the war for the FNLA at that time was one of a steady string of defeats, ensuring that the defeat of the MPLA column attracted immediate attention from Holden Roberto who, to Georgiou's surprise, appointed him head of the FNLA army, with the rank of Colonel (still unpaid). His three friends including Charlie Christodoulou arrived from Britain shortly afterwards. Within 48 hours of his arrival in Angola, Georgiou had already led his men in disarming and massacring a group of FNLA fighters (his supposed allies), whom he killed just for the "fun" of it all. Thanks to continuing recruitment in England, a somewhat larger mercenary contingent was formed, but a full battalion was never realised. The enlarged force was still rather small relative to MPLA/Cuban forces, and many of the men were civilians with no military experience, and often refusing to submit to military discipline. This, combined with the foreign origin of most of the core leadership, (Georgiou, Christodoulou and the Portuguese), created a deep gulf between the officers and the British other ranks – to say nothing of the native Angolans recruited as infantry and support troops. Most of these had no military experience and many knew no English, or even Portuguese (then still the language of government and the native elite.) The first contingent of mercenaries was mostly made up of professional soldiers, selected by a British private military company (PMC), Security Advisory Services (SAS), run by John Banks, Chris Dempster, and Dave Tomkins. Georgiou resented SAS's own leadership structure within the group, and perceived John Banks, who remained based in Britain, as a personal threat to his own position when Banks did visit Angola. Georgiou became increasingly paranoid and belligerent toward his own men, murdering African soldiers and creating a climate of fear even among the British mercenaries, none of which aided the morale of the FNLA forces or their ability to wage war successfully against the MPLA. The British journalist Patrick Brogan called Georgiou a "psychopathic killer" who executed 14 of his fellow mercenaries for cowardice, and was extremely brutal to black people. By all accounts, Georgiou killed for pleasure, and at his trial, it was established that he had killed at least 170 Angolans. Georgiou was much hated and feared by the men under his command, and by the FLNA who regarded him as a loose cannon who was just as likely to attack them as he was the MPLA. The second contingent of mercenaries sent from Britain, unlike the first, was made up mostly of working-class men with no military experience. Within a week of their arrival, about a dozen of the second contingent had accidentally maimed themselves by trying to use weapons that they did not fully understand. These undisciplined men quickly realised the perilous situation into which they had been placed, and the instability of their leadership. A group of them consequently seized vehicles and attempted to flee the country, firing on other FNLA forces in the process, including Chris Dempster. The deserters were quickly rounded up by Georgiou's men, and fourteen were summarily executed by firing squad. A third contingent of similarly inept mercenaries was recruited in the US by an American PMC. The "battalion" fought several more dramatic engagements, including successful ambushes of minor MPLA detachments. However, given his limited resources and the fact that many of his men – European and native alike – were untrained, increasingly demoralised amateurs, Georgiou's campaign was ultimately a failure. According to mercenary David Tomkins, the group spent most of its time foraging for food, usable weapons, and ammunition. Much of this foraging consisted of "raids" on villages, where the men would casually walk into town brandishing their weapons, searching for anything of use. Anyone who offered physical resistance would be shot. Lack of proper equipment was one of the key factors in the failure of foreign mercenary units in Angola generally, and in Georgiou's case in particular. The MPLA had Soviet tanks, artillery and crack Cuban troops fighting as their allies. The other two factions had mostly light infantry, not always the best trained and disciplined either. Another factor was leadership inexperience: Georgiou had absolutely no training or experience as a commissioned officer, nor did most of his counterparts in other units. Cuban accounts of the Angolan war speak of the mercenaries in a contemptuous tone. The majority of Cuban veterans of Angola describe the mercenaries they fought as inept soldiers whom they had no difficulty defeating.


Trial and execution

Georgiou was tried under the jurisdiction of the Angolan MPLA government in the Luanda Trial during June and July 1976. He was charged with illegally entering Angola as a mercenary, along with twelve other defendants. In addition he was charged with involvement in the massacre of fourteen fellow mercenaries at Maquela do Zombo in northern Angola, as well as with the murder and torture of enemy soldiers and civilians in the town of São Salvador. The killings at Maquela occurred after some mercenary recruits had mistakenly opened fire on their colleagues and, fearing retribution by Georgiou and the MPLA, had subsequently fled towards Zaire, taking all the unit's supplies. Georgiou was convicted and sentenced to death. President
Agostinho Neto António Agostinho Neto (17 September 1922 – 10 September 1979) was an Angolan Communism, communist politician and poet. He served as the first president of Angola from 1975 to 1979, having led the MPLA, Popular Movement for the Liberation of ...
rejected pleas for mercy from
Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 19268 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, her death in 2022. ...
on behalf of Georgiou and three other condemned British mercenaries. Georgiou was executed by firing squad on 10 July 1976. His sister, Panayiota 'Blondie' Georgiades, was allowed to visit him during his captivity in Angola. In a BBC interview, she said they spoke mainly about their family and the trial proceedings, conversing in
Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
. Georgiou's body was repatriated to England, and he was buried secretly in a cemetery in north London in accordance with the rites of the Greek Orthodox Church.


Notes


References

* * * * * * * *


Further reading

* * * * * — At the time of publication Major Milliard was a
Judge Advocate Judge-advocates are military lawyers serving in different capacities in the military justice systems of different jurisdictions. Australia The Australian Army Legal Corps (AALC) consists of Regular and Reserve commissioned officers that prov ...
in the United States Army Judge Advocate General's Corps. * * * — Hosted on the website of
George Washington University The George Washington University (GW or GWU) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally-chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Originally named Columbian College, it was chartered in 1821 by ...
. * * *


External links

* Time 3:28 – 5:56 – Captured and killed FNLA mercenaries possibly from the 14 Feb 76 ambushes of two FNLA patrols in Cuimba. In video clip at time 3:36 – 3:53 possibly wounded mercenaries Gustavo Grillo and John Nammock sitting in the back of a FAPLA truck. Time 4:33 and 4:53 possibly wounded mercenary Gary Acker. At 5:03 mercenary sitting on the ground wearing the beret is possibly Daniel Gearhart. {{DEFAULTSORT:Georgiou, Costas 1951 births 1976 deaths 20th-century British Army personnel 20th-century executions of British people British anti-communists British Army personnel who were court-martialled British Parachute Regiment soldiers British military personnel of The Troubles (Northern Ireland) British people executed abroad British people convicted of robbery British people convicted of torture British people convicted of the international crime of aggression British people executed for war crimes British mercenaries killed in action British white supremacists Cypriot emigrants to England Executed British mass murderers Executed military personnel Prisoners and detainees of the British military People of the Angolan Civil War Military personnel from London People executed by Angola by firing squad