Costas Georgiou, AKA Tony Callan. He fired 26 shots on Bloody Sunday. Discharged from British Army in 1972 for robbing a post office in Down. He served as a mercenary fighting for terrorists in Angola carrying out massacres before he was captured and executed by the Angolan Army

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  2. A good piece on him by Veterans for Peace. He was believed to have murdered 168 Angolans and 14 white mercenaries.

    >A BBC Panorama programme on the mercenaries said:

    >‘In Angola it was the psychopathic exploits of a mercenary leader, the self-styled Colonel Callan that caused public outrage. Callan, a dishonourably discharged paratrooper, ordered the execution of twelve mercenaries … when they refused to fight’.

    >Almost three decades later a civilian witness at the Saville Bloody Sunday Inquiry spoke to the Irish Times:

    >‘The witness said that … Bloody Sunday journalists had shown him some photographs and he had picked out one which resembled the soldier who shot at him. He was told that the paratrooper in question had been among a number of British mercenaries who were tried and executed during the Angolan civil war after they had killed and wounded many innocent civilians. The journalists showed him a picture of a man … and told him this was the same paratrooper, that he was a Greek Cypriot nicknamed “Colonel Callan”, and that he had fired 26 bullets on Bloody Sunday’. 

    https://vfpuk.org/posts/jekyll-hyde-of-soldiering/

  9. Did he kill people on Bloody Sunday? If he fired 26 rounds at unarmed kids from an elevated position one would unfortunately assume so.

    Let’s hope the Angolans took their time with him.

  10. Typical British soldier,, amazing how he was discharged for Robbing a shop after firing bullets at unarmed men women and children,guessing the person who owned the shop was highly regarded in the circles of the British army to out weight the slaughter of innocent Irish people

  17. I find it strange there’s not much about that clandeboye post office robbery in 1972 that the 4 soldiers were discharged for.

    Someone put in a FOI request for more information, but it was largely dismissed. Some references say they were charged before Bloody Sunday.

    It’s not mentioned on CAIN, which is normally very complete.

    https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/othelem/chron/ch72.htm

  19. >he was captured and executed by the Angolan Army

    Hopefully there was a lot of torture and pain between the capture and execution

  20. NYT from the time:

    LUANDA, Angola, July 10—Four mercenaries, including Daniel F. Gearhart of the United States, were executed by a firing squad here today, the Angolan press agency announced.

    The agency said a military police squad carried out the executions this afternoon in the presence of officials.

    The three other men executed were British—Costas Georglou, 25, also known as Colonel Callan; Andrew McKenzie, 23; and John Derek Barker, 35.

    President Agostinho Neto yesterday confirmed the death sentences passed by a tribunal on June 28. He ignored appeals for clemency from Queen Elizabeth, the International Commission of Jurists and others.

    Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger at a news conference made a last‐minute appeal for Mr. Gearhart, who is from Kensington, Md.

    [In Newport, R.I., where he was about to dine with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, President Ford issued a statement assailing the “unjustified and unwarranted execution” of the American and the Britons.]

    President Neto explained his refusal to commute the death sentences in these words:

    “Every Angolan remembers the vile and cruel behavior of the mercenaries who have sown death and despair in African countries in return for pay, trying in this way to put a brake on the higher interests of a people for a few coins.”

    After the executions, the Angolan authorities announced that they would allow eight days for relatives to claim the bodies of the four men.

    Angola’s Minister of Justice, Diogenes Antonio Boavida, was among the officials who attended the executions.

    Mr. Gearhart, father of four children, was said to have advertised himself as a mercenary in an American publication called Soldier of Fortune. The presiding judge at the trial described him as “a highly dangerous character.”

    Nine other mercenaries who appeared before the tribunal were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 16 to 30 years.

    Colonel Callan, accused of murder and sadism, was sentenced to death for killing one white mercenary and ordering the massacre of 13 others during the Angolan civil war. He was also found guilty of having killed two Angolan prisoners.

    Mr. McKenzie, another former paratrooper was convict.. ed of having taken part in the February massacre for which Colonel Callan was sentenced.

    Mr. Barker, also a former paratrooper, was convicted for his role as commandant of an airfield at São António do Zaire.

    The trial, conducted by five judges, led to a worldwide debate on the morality of mercenary activities. The Genevabased International Commission of Jurists, urging clemency, said In a cablegram to President Neto: “Mercenarism should be, but is not yet a crime in international law.”

    President Neto made it clear that he wanted the executions to serve as a warning for other mercenaries in South‐West Africa and Rhodesia, known by African nationalists as Namibia and Zimbabwe, respectively.

  24. He seems a scumbag, with very little regard for life in general. It’s bizarre how much damage one individual can do to the lives of so many others.

  40. I didn’t realise until today how much I needed to put a face to one of these cunts. I hope he died screaming.

  45. I’m putting together a data graphic timeline of how many massacres were committed by British troops against unarmed civilians in British colonies just in the 20th century – and the numbers are shocking.

    The British army committed 20 massacres in the 100 years from 1900 to 1999, across three continents (Africa, Asia, Europe). That is 1 massacre every 5 years. Haven’t done the death numbers yet, but that is going to have more uncertainty because some of the massacres killed so many civilians that nobody could be sure of the numbers.

    One other factor in the uncertainty of the number of deaths is the British always investigated themselves and never found any wrongdoing. And that is if there was an investigation. Because in every case the investigation was always preceded by a cover up.

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