Dirty Combat: Secret Wars and Serious Misadventures

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I was, and am, a huge fan of Norma Percy, the great documentary filmmaker who made 'The Death of Yugoslavia''Iran and the West' and so many other great series." Read More Related Articles

In the 1960s he was known as a career thief and in the mid 1970s he signed up with a mercenary leader to fight in northern Angola. My interest in politics and history fuelled a desire to make docs in this arena, and I think this stems from just watching the news a lot as a kid," David went on. INT: So did you actually... I mean, even if you didn't participate in battles, you were in some ambushes. Did you meet Cubans, did you see Cubans? 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. Georgiou has been implicated as one of the participants in the Bloody Sunday massacre. During a hearing in 2000, a witness said he'd fired 26 shots into the crowd. [1] [2] After training was complete, the team waited for Escobar to return to his compound, and then got the signal.

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DT: Yes. It seemed to suit certain parties there to question people with very brutal violence - I mean, and these would be ... somebody would maybe inform that somebody who is a local character is a spy. He would be arrested, for want of a better word, and he'd probably be the local greengrocer who knew absolutely nothing, and would be questioned as to his links with the MPLA, was he a radio operator? All nonsense questions. They were trying to achieve something, but really weren't going to do any good. The guy, probably as innocent as the day he was born, would answer in the negative, that he knew nothing. Questioning would then become more brutal, with physical beatings, escalating into use of knives or whatever it took to extract... until it was quite obvious that he knew nothing, and he would then be executed. As a young man born with a taste for adventure, he soon specialised in blowing open safes in Britain and Europe. He once even broke into the safe of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

He was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in September after arriving at Houston airport on a flight from London. Unfortunately for Dave, the plan went wrong when the helicopter crashed into a mountain during cloud. The pilot died in the crash, while it took three days for Dave and Peter to escape the jungle. So I had to sit in an interview with a mass murderer whose crimes were utterly repugnant, yet we all had to remain professional and polite, make small talk about football and the weather and then listen to him talk about torturing informants. It was an interesting experience." It was always going to be the toughest. It depicts little more than a canal bending away from the camera and appears to have been shot from a moving train or car. Tomkins thinks it may have been taken somewhere in Switzerland, though he’s a little perturbed at the prospect of finding out for sure. INT: So, Callan and three others were executed later on by Angolans in the official trial. Why, if they actually never took part in real...?The Columbian people are incredibly friendly and approachable, they are like Boltonians but with a Latin vibe! My first effort was a cop thriller starring some friends and my nan. She was game for helping out and didn't mind getting shot in the story and putting ketchup down her face." An investigation by The Observer has pieced together Tomkins's astonishing story. It shows how he graduated from being a professional thief to become a mercenary in a brutal conflict in Africa before becoming embroiled in a plot to kill one of the world's most notorious drug barons. Among those interviewed for the documentary is the man who was Escobar's bomber, a man linked to the deaths of hundreds, Luis Fernando Acosta Mejia, aka Nangas. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison in Columbia, but was released after serving 15.