James Le Mesurier

Le Mesurier was born on 25 May 1971 at RAF Changi in Singapore.[6][7] He was the son of Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Havilland Churchill Le Mesurier, of the Royal Marines, and his Swedish wife, Ewa.[3] He had an older sister.[7] Actor John Le Mesurier was a relative.[6][8]

He was educated at Northaw prep school, Canford School and attended Ulster University (sponsored by the army), but for security reasons finished the final year of his degree at Aberystwyth University studying International Relations and Strategic Studies.[6][8]

In 1990, Le Mesurier was commissioned into the Royal Green Jackets, British Army, as a second lieutenant (University Cadetship); the British Army was sponsoring him through university.[3][9] Having graduated from university, he was appointed second lieutenant (on probation) on 20 June 1993 upon entering the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.[10] At Sandhurst, he graduated top of class and won the Queens’ Medal award.[8] He was promoted to lieutenant on 11 August 1993,[11] and to captain on 11 August 1996.[12]

He served in Northern Ireland, then for two years became an infantry training instructor with the Army Training Regiment in Winchester.[6] He then returned to the Royal Green Jackets as an intelligence officer in Bosnia and Kosovo.[6] In 1999, he worked as a Return and Reconstruction Task Force Officer at the Office of the High Representative in the former Yugoslavia.[13] He retired from the military on 1 June 2000.[14]

Le Mesurier then worked for a year as a United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo Policy Advisor in the former Yugoslavia.[3] He then became the Head of the Jericho Monitoring Mission for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 2002 to 2004, responsible for monitoring six Palestinian prisoners.[8][15] Subsequently, he took an Advisor role at the Embassy of the United States, Baghdad.[13]

From 2005 to 2007, Le Mesurier worked for the British headquartered Olive Group (later merged into the U.S. Constellis Group).[3]

From 2008 to 2012,[13] he worked as an urban security expert for Good Harbor Consulting,[16] chaired by Richard A. Clarke, former U.S. counter-terrorism official who later accused George W. Bush of committing war crimes.[17] Le Mesurier's work included training the United Arab Emirates (UAE) oil and gas field protection force, designing security infrastructure for Abu Dhabi, and safety and security for the 2010 Arabian Gulf Cup in Yemen.[17][16]

From 2012 to 2014, Le Mesurier worked for the UAE consultancy Analysis, Research, and Knowledge (ARK),[18] which stated its goal was to "help realise the legitimate political, social and economic aspirations of conflict-affected communities".[19] In 2013, with the Turkish NGO AKUT Search and Rescue Association, ARK started training non-governmental Syrian civil defence teams in Turkey, funded by the UK, U.S. and Japanese governments and managed by Le Mesurier.[20][21][22]

Le Mesurier was married three times; the first two marriages, to Aurelie Marle, and to Sarah Tosh with whom he had two daughters, ended in divorce.[3][18][37] In 2018, he married Emma Winberg,[18][3] who is a director of Mayday Rescue and was formerly a Foreign and Commonwealth Office diplomat.[6][38]

On 11 November 2019, Le Mesurier was found dead in the street at 4:30 in the morning (1:30 GMT) in the Kemankeş Kara Mustafa Paşa neighbourhood of Beyoğlu, Istanbul, as a result of what appeared to have been a fall from his balcony.[39][40][41] Le Mesurier was found with fractures to his head and legs.[42] Le Mesurier's wife said they had only gone to bed a short while earlier at 4 a.m., taking sleeping tablets.[8] Later The Times reported that the Turkish police were treating the death as suicide, based on information from Le Mesurier's wife and his recent medical history, and that no forensic, autopsy or CCTV evidence indicated otherwise.[43][44][45][46]

On 14 November 2019, Le Mesurier's body was repatriated to London, while the Turkish investigation continued.[47] At the time of his death, it was reported by The Independent and PBS NewsHour that the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad said Le Mesurier had been murdered by Western intelligence services coordinated by the Central Intelligence Agency.[33][48]

A month later, the Turkish authorities confirmed the injuries he sustained were consistent with a fall from the balcony, according to the post mortem, "general body trauma linked to a fall from height". No DNA from other individuals was found. A toxicology report, according to a private Turkish broadcaster NTV, found signs of sleeping pills in Le Mesurier's body matching the statement from his widow.[49] On 2 March 2020 Turkish prosecutors closed their investigation, with the death ruled as a suicide. His widow was released from her restriction on leaving Turkey.[50]

Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant reported that, in March 2019, an auditor, who was examining the Mayday Rescue accounts, asked about a cash amount of $50,000 that had been taken by Le Mesurier over a year earlier. Le Mesurier later emailed receipts to the auditor. In November 2019, the auditor discovered the receipts were forged and a Mayday employee admitted that she had written out and backdated the receipts at the request of Le Mesurier. Three days before his death, Le Mesurier wrote an email to Mayday's donor countries stating that the disappearance of the $50,000 was fraud. He offered to resign from the foundation.[51][52]

A forensic inquiry of Mayday's accounts by Grant Thornton subsequently took place instigated by donor countries, as most of the financial records were missing; a summary report of which de Volkskrant's journalists had seen. Le Mesurier had borrowed a large amount from the foundation to pay for his wedding in 2018, and cash intended for other purposes had been used to pay bonuses to senior staff including himself and his wife. The new administrator called salaries of senior staff "excessive", in some cases €26,000 per month, although these had been consented to by donor countries. The original matter reported by Le Mesurier, a payment of $50,000 to himself, was found to be the result of a "misunderstanding" and not fraud.[5][51][53]

• "Intrigue - Why no-one could save the man who co-founded the White Helmets". BBC. 6 November 2020. Retrieved 9 November 2020.