The firm guarding sites where aid is distributed in Gaza has been using members of a US biker gang with a history of hostility to Islam to run its armed security, a BBC investigation has found.
BBC News has confirmed the identities of 10 members of the Infidels Motorcycle Club working in Gaza for UG Solutions – a private contractor providing security at Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, where hundreds of civilians seeking food have been martyred in scenes of chaos and gunfire.
The BBC revealed that seven members of the gang are in senior positions overseeing sites at the controversial aid operation backed by Israel and US President Donald Trump.
UG Solutions (UGS) defended its employees’ qualifications for the job, saying it does not screen people out for “personal hobbies or affiliations unrelated to job performance”.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) said it has “a zero-tolerance policy for any hateful, discriminatory biases or conduct”.
According to the investigation by the BBC, Infidels MC was set up by US military veterans of the Iraq war in 2006 and members see themselves as modern Crusaders, using the Crusader cross as their symbol – a reference to the medieval Christians who fought Muslims and invaded Al-Quds Jerusalem in the eleventh century.
The gang is currently hosting anti-Muslim hate speech on its Facebook page and has previously held a pig roast “in defiance of” the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
“Putting the Infidels biker club in charge of delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza is like putting the KKK in charge of delivering humanitarian aid in Sudan. It makes no sense whatsoever,” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a leading Muslim civil rights organization in the US.
“It’s bound to lead to violence, and that’s exactly what we’ve seen happen in Gaza.”
The Gang Leader, Members
The gang’s leader, Johnny “Taz” Mulford, is a former sergeant in the US Army who was punished for conspiracy to commit bribery, theft and making false statements to military authorities. He is now the “country team leader” running UG Solutions’ contract in Gaza, the BBC reported.
It said it had emailed Infidels MC for comment. In response, Mulford instructed fellow leaders of the biker gang not to reply but included the BBC when he clicked “reply all” – inadvertently disclosing email addresses and names of fellow Infidels MC members, some of whom were working in Gaza.
The BBC matched up names with public information about Infidels MC’s leadership, and evidence from UG Solutions insiders who worked with them, identifying 10 members of Infidels MC who Mulford recruited to work with him in Gaza.
In addition to Mulford, the BBC identified three leading members of Infidels MC who also have senior roles at UGS’s Gaza operation:
- Larry “J-Rod” Jarrett, who has been publicly named as the Infidels MC vice-president, and is in charge of logistics
- The gang’s national treasurer, Bill “Saint” Siebe, who leads the security team for one of GHF’s four “safe distribution sites”
- One of the gang’s founding members, Richard “A-Tracker” Lofton, a team leader at another distribution site
The BBC said that confidential documents, open-source information and former UGS contractors have enabled it to confirm the identities of a further six Infidels bikers hired to work in Gaza, noting that three of them are leaders or deputy leaders of the firm’s armed security teams.
Citing an estimate by a former contractor, the BBC found that in total, at least 40 of about 320 people hired to work for UG Solutions in Gaza were recruited from Infidels MC.
UG Solutions is paying each contractor $980 (£720) per day including expenses, rising to $1,580 (£1,160) per day for team leaders at GHF’s “safe distribution sites”, documents seen by the BBC show.
One leader of a team in Gaza overseeing site security, Josh Miller, posted a photo of a group of contractors in Gaza with a banner reading “Make Gaza Great Again”.
Earlier in July, the BBC quoted a retired US soldier who worked for the notorious Israeli- and US-backed GHF as saying that he had “without question … witnessed war crimes” in the killing of civilians seeking food aid in the besieged strip.
“In my entire career, I have never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population until I was in Gaza at the hands of the [Israeli army] and US contractors,” Anthony Aguilar told the BBC in July.
Source: BBC
