Losing a leg, prison time, and post-traumatic stress disorder. This is the price paid by the British Simon Hutt for the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the 1990s.
Hutt is one of the thousands of foreign volunteers who fought in BiH in units of the Croatian Defense Council (HVO), the Army of the Republic of BiH or the Army of the Republika Srpska (RS).
In the ranks of the Croatian Defence Forces (HOS) and Croatian Defence Council (HVO)
He arrived in BiH as a 19-year-old in September 1992. He escaped from the British army and traveled to Croatia, and a month later he went to the battlefield in northern Bosnia.
When asked why he came to BiH, he told that the television footage of Bosniak and Croat prisoners in the Omarska camp in Prijedor in mid-1992 was “the last straw”.
BiH does not have official data on the number of foreign volunteers who fought in the war from 1992 to 1995.
They got monuments in BiH
The participation of foreign volunteers in the war in BiH is today witnessed by graves and monuments throughout the country.
They were erected in honor of Russian, German and warriors from Islamic countries, who fought in the armies on the territory of BiH.
At the same time, during the war in the 1990s, volunteers from Arab countries mostly fought in the ranks of the Republic of BiH Army.
During the1990s, the BiH battlefield was also interesting to members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Iranian intelligence service VEVAK, as written in the book “Al-Qaeda in BiH: Myth or Real Danger”.
The units of the Army of RS were helped by Russian volunteers during the war. Apart from the Russians, there were also Greek and Romanian soldiers in the ranks of the mercenaries who fought on the side of the Army of RS, Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
