Back from the Front: Stories that Hurt

Terror in Beslan (2/2)

Julius Strauss — Sun, 08 Sep 2024 08:06:45 GMT

Rescuers taking children from the school in Beslan. Courtesy of Reuters.

I was in the southern Russian town of Beslan. In a school not more than a few hundred yards from where I was standing, militants loyal to a brutal Chechen warlord were holed up with more than a thousand schoolchildren, parents and teachers.

In the school gym where they had crammed th…

Terror in Beslan (1/2)

Julius Strauss — Sun, 01 Sep 2024 13:24:49 GMT

A soldier brings a baby out of the school in Beslan. Courtesy of EPA.

The Beslan school siege may have have happened two decades ago but it still resonates deeply. The three-day hostage crisis in southern Russia that ended in the death of 334, more than 180 of them children, was one of the formative events that made Vladimir Putin the leader that he is …

The Killers That Came in the Night

Julius Strauss — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 06:04:08 GMT

I stood with my back to the wall in a hot, stuffy room. It was high summer and I was sticky with sweat. Around me there was a smattering of men in uniform, but most were civilians. They didn’t introduce themselves.

Outside I could hear the blades of a US military helicopter thumping as the sun beat down on the dusty compound.

The year was 2011 and I was i…

Return to Kosovo

Julius Strauss — Sun, 12 May 2024 17:50:07 GMT

Besnik Deliu

It was supposed to be a modest project.

A quiet reunion with a family I had not met in two decades, a few days revisiting old stomping grounds in the Balkans, a bit of footage filmed by my daughter Emma and turned into a short film.

Two months at the outside, I thought. A few thousand euros in expenses, Emma said. And it was a visit I was hap…

Death in Gaza

Julius Strauss — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 08:31:30 GMT

Body Count

Julius Strauss — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 08:06:32 GMT

Black Tulip collect and document Russian bodies they find.

NEAR DOVHENKE - The Russian soldier lay where he had fallen. His plastic combat belt and flak jacket were still intact, but his legs were splayed at an unnatural angle, and where his face and scalp had once been there was now only a skull with dark stains on it.

Oleksiy, leader of the Black Tulip,…

There were 24 children in the room when the policeman began firing (2/2)

Julius Strauss — Wed, 04 May 2022 07:47:41 GMT

Fadil Mucolli, whose three children, mother, father and wife were killed by a Serb policeman in 1999, talking with Leman, my translator, and in central Kosovo. Photo by Bonaventura Keresztény.

In Part 1 of this post I tell how I returned to a massacre site more than two decades after discovering it. In this part I learn that the Serb policeman who murd…

There were 24 children in the room when the policeman began firing (1/2)

Julius Strauss — Tue, 03 May 2022 09:18:42 GMT

The Daily Telegraph from 17th June 1999. Coverage of the Poklek massacre in Kosovo.

PART 1/2

Just over a week ago I had one of the most unexpected and poignant reunions I have had in a long time. I was in central Kosovo with Emma, my daughter, Leman, my old wartime translator, and a film crew.

We were there to make a documentary about a little boy called B…

A Long-Awaited Reunion

Julius Strauss — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 14:02:25 GMT

Besnik, Leman and I - now and then.

I had been sitting outside in the car for half an hour when I was summoned. My daughter came to tell me that the cameras were ready to roll, the protagonists have been miked up, and it was time for me to make an entrance.

Like an actor on the first night of a big show I walked up to the entrance to the oda - the special…

The Albanian Boy

Julius Strauss — Sun, 17 Apr 2022 11:16:28 GMT

Besnik a few weeks after the massacre. Photo courtesy of Hazir Reka.

In the early stages of the Kosovo war in 1998 Serb paramilitaries stormed into a camp of Albanian women and children and murdered more than 20 of them. The oldest survivor was a little boy called Besnik. Over several months I became close to Besnik. Twenty years after we had last been i…