A FORMER Colchester-based paratrooper is to spend the next 20 years in an Iraqi prison after being convicted of killing two men.

Daniel Fitzimons, 31, is the first Westerner to be convicted by an Iraqi court since the 2003 invasion.

He was found guilty over the 2009 shooting deaths of fellow contractors Scot Paul McGuigan and Australian Darren Hoare, and with attempting to kill an Iraqi guard.

Fitzsimons, who had been facing the death penalty, said as he was being led from the courtroom that he was happy with the sentence. But when asked whether he thought the trial was fair, he said: "No."

The former security contractor from Rochford, who left the Parachute Regiment in 2004, admitted shooting the men but claimed it was self-defence and that he had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

His Iraqi lawyer Tariq Harb said: “This is a very good sentence. I saved him from the gallows."

Fitzsimons now has 30 days to appeal.

Last week, Fitzsimons' British lawyer John Tipple, of Harwich solicitors Linn and Associates said the family and British authorities were trying to reach an agreement with the Iraqi government to have Fitzsimons transferred to a British prison if he was not given the death penalty.

His step-mother Liz Fitzsimons said she was "euphoric" that he had avoided the death penalty, but still had "massive concerns" of the treatment a former paratrooper would receive in an Iraqi jail.

She said: "He said 'I will be a target' and he said 'I just won't last'. He said 'I will be a dead man if they put me in there'.

"We really are concerned that wherever he does end up he is safe.”

Mr McGuigan's fiancee Nicci Prestage, 37 gave birth to her daughter Elsie-mai weeks after her father’s death.

Ms Prestage said her daughter was the "true victim of Fitzsimons's actions".