Groups urge state review of NC company’s Gaza food distribution ‘crimes’ | Opinion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Local advocacy groups ask NC officials to probe Davidson firm over Gaza deaths
- CAIR-NC and partners demand AG review UG Solutions' role in aid distribution
- Attorney General staff will meet CAIR-NC; legal action faces jurisdictional hurdles
Davidson, N.C., is a long way from the conflict in Gaza, but advocacy groups are trying to bring the two together to draw attention to alleged war crimes.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations North Carolina chapter (CAIR-NC), along with other groups, is asking North Carolina officials to investigate UG Solutions, a Davidson-based company that supplied security protection for food distribution in famine-stricken Gaza.
More than 1,000 Palestinians died during the chaotic distribution process that saw surging crowds, the looting of aid trucks and Israeli soldiers and private guards firing weapons toward the crowds.
Anthony Aguilar, a retired US special forces officer and a former UG Solutions contract employee, says the company’s guards threw stun grenades and fired live ammunition toward Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The company says Aguilar is making false claims out of retribution for being fired. Aguilar says he cut his ties with the company voluntarily.
“Companies incorporated in North Carolina must not be complicit in war crimes or human rights abuses abroad,” Al Rieder, manager of CAIR-NC, said in a news release. “We are urging the state’s top officials to uphold the law and ensure that North Carolina is not used as a base for operations that contribute to the suffering of innocent people.”
The groups have asked the North Carolina secretary of state and the state attorney general to investigate UG Solutions for its actions in Gaza as subcontractor to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The secretary of state’s office said it does not have the authority to investigate a business’ practices, but the attorney general’s staff does plan to meet with CAIR-NC representatives next month.
“We look forward to hearing directly from them on this and any other issues they want to discuss,” said Nazneen Ahmed, the communications director for Attorney General Jeff Jackson.
Jennifer Counter, a spokeswoman for UG Solutions, dismissed CAIR-NC’s request for investigations. “At its core, CAIR is an activist organization that relies on fundraising to sustain its operations, and we view its letter to the NC State Attorney General as merely a fundraising ploy,” she said.
Should Attorney General Jackson look into UG Solutions, he will face a complicated set of accusations and denials just as an extended ceasefire is allowing a clearer view of what happened in Gaza.
U.S. House members and senators from Texas, California, Vermont and Maryland sent a joint letter to UG Solutions in July warning that the company’s conduct in Gaza had put the military veterans it hired as guards in legal jeopardy.
“Your operations have exposed hundreds of brave American veterans to future criminal and civil liability under U.S. laws criminalizing war crimes, torture, and forced deportation,” the letter said.
UG Solutions responded: “Our company and its personnel comply with all applicable laws. No one has taken lethal action or targeted innocent civilians.”
UG Solutions is headed by Davidson resident Jameson Govoni, a former Army Green Beret and entrepreneur. His various business ventures include Alcohol Armor, an elixir that claims to prevent hangovers.
It’s unlikely that a state attorney general can untangle what happened in Gaza with enough certainty to take action against UG Solutions. But CAIR-NC and other human rights and interfaith groups hope that appeals at the state level might generate attention to potential war crimes that are not getting enough attention in Washington, D.C.
Sharif Hannan, member of one of the groups — the Charlotte Muslim Caucus — said, “We’re doing what we can at a state level because that’s where we see the possibility of some movements, even though it may only be moving a small movement we think that can also snowball into a bigger movement.”
Whatever the merits of the claims by CAIR-NC, they deserve a fair hearing at the state and congressional levels. So much of what happened in Gaza has been obscured by Israel’s banning of journalists. With a ceasefire now in effect, it’s time for a full accounting.
Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 919-404-7583, or nbarnett@newsobserver.comm
This story was originally published October 28, 2025 at 7:34 AM.