Mohamed Al Fayad, Were His Bodyguards Aware Of The Abuse?

Being a bodyguard puts you in a very privileged position. Especially when you are working with a principal (the person that you are protecting) like former Harrod’s owner Mohamed Al Fayad.

When a principal such as Mohamed Al Fayad has 24 hour around the clock protection, the bodyguard team become privy to the life of the person that they are protecting. You are there when the principal wakes up. You are there when they go to bed. You are at social engagements with them, at business meetings, and on holiday. You’re also there when they go through a divorce, fall in love, or when they grieve the loss of a loved one. You spend more time with the principal than you do your own family, and can get to know them intimately from a privileged position of being within their inner most circle of trust.

The bodyguard team around Mohamed Al Fayad was large, and a sought after position for any bodyguard to aspire to be in. Those within the team were generally UK government trained bodyguards who had already experienced work at the highest levels protecting people from UK MPs, to UK Royalty, or UK Ambassadors. Instilled in this level of protection from day one of your training is that the confidentially of the principal should never be breached. The principal’s life ultimately, but also their image and reputation should never be compromised because of your actions as a bodyguard.

So Mohamed Al Fayad’s bodyguards will have had an absolute dedication to him. Not just to protect his life, but also to protect his public image.

Within a bodyguard team there are a number of different positions that are used to protect your principal. One of those positions that Mohamed Al Fayad had within his protection team is a residential security operator. The primary role of the residential security operator is to provide protection to the principal while they are at their residence. One of the main tasks that the residential security operator completes is to monitor who is coming in and out of the residence. Therefore it will have been very clear to the residential security operators that there was an inappropriate amount of young girls and women coming in and out of Mohamed Al Fayad’s Park Lane villas. Some of whom would have clearly been in distress when they were leaving. 

Another position within a bodyguard team is the role of the security driver. The bodyguard chosen to drive the principal and their guests to and from locations such as their residence or office. To social events and family engagements. This is a very privileged position as you see and hear things within the vehicle that very few people will ever get to experience. As well as driving the principal, when you’re not with them, if they are at the office for an extended period of time for example, you can play a support role in managing the travel logistics of their guests, business associates, or friends and family. The BBC has made allegations that the security team, and especially the drivers were facilitating the behaviour of Mohamed Al Fayad. In that the security drivers were moving the young girls and women between the locations such as the Park Lane villas and the Ritz in France. Which thus enabled Mohamed Al Fayad to commit the abuse. As with the residential security operators, if the BBC’s allegations are found to be substantiated, the security drivers will have known that there was an inappropriate amount of young girls and women being transported to and from Mohamed Al Fayad.

For a principal like Mohamed Al Fayad, they don’t just have a bodyguard team. They have a whole support team around them of personal assistants, house managers, and PR coordinators for example. The support team become close knit from working long hours, travelling together, and being in the privileged position of working so closely with the principal. This support team will have heard the rumours and talked amongst themselves, with the topic of Mohamed Al Fayad’s inappropriate behaviour being an obvious point of discussion. Therefore it is highly likely that the majority of the security team were aware to some extent as to what was going on through hearing the rumours and conjecture about the abuse. So it wasn’t just the residential security operators or security drivers who knew from witnessing the abuse directly.

To be a bodyguard at the level of protecting a principal like Mohamed Fayed, you are at the top of your game. A highly trained and experienced security operator. You have to make quick decisions, be able to think on your feet, analyse situations quickly, and make judgement calls about how you conduct yourself within the ever changing environments that you work with the principal in.

But as a bodyguard you can also make a moral judgement call about the conduct of people that you are working around. In corporate protection you might see a business executive who has a bullying style of leadership. Or in celebrity protection you might be seeing open drug abuse. Everyone will have a moral compass about the behaviour that they are willing to accept or work around. But there should be no acceptance of abuse at the level that was being witnessed around Mohamed Al Fayad. It is clearly difficult to put yourself out there and raise concerns about the behaviour of what was a very powerful man, with influence to the highest echelons of British society. This is a really tough thing to do if you are a young girl or women working as a personal assistant. But a large proportion of Mohamed Al Fayad’s bodyguard team were ex-police officers, both civilian and military. Who should have had moral values instilled in them that the blatant abuse of young girls and women takes priority over your dedication to the principal. But they failed to act effectively. Instead it has taken the bravery of Mohamed Al Fayad’s victims to come forward so that the full extent of the abuse and facilitation can finally be investigated.

Article written by Tom Richmond, Managing Director of Security and Safety Solutions, and former UK Government trained bodyguard.