The security industry: Britain's private army in Iraq - Independent Online Edition > Middle East

The security industry: Britain's private army in Iraq - Independent Online Edition > Middle East: "The British security guards taken hostage in Baghdad are just four among a foreign legion paid for by you. Yet as we grow more reliant on them, their future is perilous in a country without rules. By Andrew Johnson, Marie Woolf and Raymond Whitaker

Baghdad is a city where there is no safety and no law, but the five Britons - a computer consultant and his four-man security detail - would have been entitled to feel relatively secure inside the Finance Ministry.

The building was heavily guarded by uniformed Iraqi police and paramilitaries. It was a Tuesday morning, and Palestine Street was busy, with more people venturing out since the US-led security 'surge' damped down the violence in the centre of the Iraqi capital.

Yet in broad daylight, a convoy of vehicles with up to 40 men, some in the camouflage uniforms of special police commandos, was able to drive up to the ministry and pass through the gate. The men headed straight for where the Britons were working, took them without a struggle and drove off. Even by the standards of the most dangerous city in the world, it was an especially brazen kidnapping. Nothing has been heard of the victims since." Read complete post here.