Trusted Mole: A Soldier’s Journey into Bosnia’s Heart of Darkness

by Milos Stankovic (Author), M.P. Martin Bell (Foreword)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2000

  $4.75

  Fuelled by outrage at his arrest in December 1997 by MoD police, Milos Stankovic, a major in the Parachute Regiment of the British Army and the son of a Royalist Serb, decided to write his extraordinary story: a dramatic tale of life on the edge in war-ravaged Bosnia. Because of his fluency in Serbo-Croat, Stankovic (known as Mike Stanley in the Army) acted as the high-powered go-between for General Mike Rose (commander of Britain's UN force) and the Bosnian Serb leaders Mladic and Karadzic (who hated each other). Shuttling between the two camps, he played a crucial part in securing the release of UN hostages and in establishing ceasefire accords. His life was constantly at risk; nevertheless, with Rose's full support, he ran a 'Schindler's List' operation, smuggling families (Serb, Croat or Muslim) out of besieged Sarajevo. His arrest came as a thunderbolt. What lay behind it will be revealed in the book and will ignite an international controversy.

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $3.27

  The powerful, disturbing and highly acclaimed account of a British officer in the Parachute Regiment, of part Yugoslav origin, painfully caught up in the savage maelstrom of the Bosnian war.

  Milos Stankovic worked as an interpreter and liaison officer for senior British commanders and two British UN generals - Mike Rose and Rupert Smith. Armed with the pseudonym `Mike Stanley' he was propelled from one nerve-racking crisis to another as he helped negotiate ceasefires between rival warlords, secured the release of UN hostages and organised the escape from Sarajevo of stricken families.

  Yet his close contacts with the Bosnian Serb leadership of Dr Karadzic and General Mladic bred suspicion and paranoia on all sides - not just in the Bosnian Muslim and Serb ranks (who thought he might be a British spy - General Rose's `trusted mole') but in the minds of the Americans as well. In a final, horrific twist, the author was arrested by the British authorities on suspicion of being a Serb spy - two and a half years after returning from Bosnia.