Peter McAleese

Peter McAleese (7 September 1942 – 18 March 2024) was a Scottish former special forces soldier and mercenary who attempted to assassinate Pablo Escobar in the late 1980s.

McAleese fought in several Cold War conflicts while serving with elite units such as the British Army's Parachute Regiment and Special Air Service, the Rhodesian Special Air Service and the Selous Scouts branch of the British South Africa Police, and South Africa's 44 Parachute Brigade and 32 Battalion. As a mercenary or private military contractor, he worked in countries including Apartheid South Africa, Angola, Uganda, Colombia, Russia, Algeria and Iraq.

McAleese was the author of the book No Mean Soldier and the subject of the 2021 UK documentary film Killing Escobar.

Early life McAleese was born into a Roman Catholic family of Irish descent in Glasgow, Scotland, within sight of Barlinnie Prison, and spent his childhood years in the city's Riddrie district. Growing up he was often beaten by his father, who had served in the military and had a reputation for being an aggressive fighting man. McAleese was expelled from St Roch's Secondary School for fighting other students aged 13.

Angola mercenary McAleese first worked on oil rigs in the North Sea after leaving the British military, The unit was at the forefront of fighting in the Rhodesian Bush War, and McAleese took part in many cross border raids into Mozambique to combat ZANLA rebels.

In 1979, McAleese joined the Special Branch of British South Africa Police, where his main duty was to train "pseudo gangs" for the Selous Scouts. McAleese was recommended for the Honoris Crux due to his actions during a battle in Namibia shortly after the unit's formation. After becoming increasingly disillusioned with life in Apartheid South Africa, such as an incident where he overheard his 4-year-old son using the racial slur "kaffir", At the end of the 1980s, he spent two years as a security contractor during the "Colombian conflict". In the mid-1990s he worked in Moscow as a bodyguard training instructor, and undertook security work in Algeria and Iraq for several years. The mercenaries then left Colombia and McAleese returned to the UK, where he continued to search for work in the private security industry.

In early 1989, McAleese and Tomkins were contracted by the Cali Cartel to assassinate their rival, Pablo Escobar. McAleese and 12 of his original team of British Commonwealth mercenaries travelled to Colombia and set up camp in a jungle clearing in Valle del Cauca, which was 3 hours helicopter flight away from Escobar's heavily defended mansion at Hacienda Nápoles.

However on 4 June 1989, while on route to carry out the attack, bad weather caused the pilot of McAleese's Hughes 500 helicopter to crash into a mountainside of the Central Colombian Andes due to poor visibility. The rest of the team aborted the mission once contact was lost with McAleese's helicopter and flew back to Valle del Cauca, where McAleese also returned after hospital treatment in Cali. Although McAleese wanted to launch a second attempt after a couple of weeks of rehearsals, increased Colombian security forces activity resulting from the murder of Luis Carlos Galán during a political rally caused Cali Cartel to cancel the contract, and McAleese then returned to England. McAleese later claimed that after he returned to the UK, a pair of what he assumed to be MI6 agents approached him at his pub to warn him off from launching any further attempts at assassinating Escobar.

Retirement and death In 1993, McAleese published his memoir, entitled No Mean Soldier, which has been reprinted several times.

In an effort to make amends for previous bad behaviour, McAleese gave up alcohol in 2013 and became a devout Catholic.

Publications