MURDER AND DECEPTION
What was crucial was that it gave an insight into the way in which the gangs of freelance marauders, enlisted by the Croatians to plunge Yugoslavia into bloody civil war, go about their business.
The British company, about 30 strong, was based in the town of Osijek, which was been the flashpoint for heavy fighting. One of its functions, the programme demonstrated, had been to provoke breaks in the cease fires arranged between the two sides in the conflict, in an attempt to throw the blame for continued shelling and violence on the overwhelmingly Serbian Yugoslav Federal Army.
These provocations bear the stamp of careful and systematic planning. The documentary proved this beyond doubt with footage showing a team of British and French mercenaries going out to lay explosives charges.
Radio news reports the next morning then said that "the shelling of Osijek was intense" and was "the worst violation of the cease fire since the current truce went into force."
The reality, explained the programmes commentary, was something different. The mercenaries had, in fact been in action laying explosives "to decieve the European Community observers who would assume it was the Serbs".
The British mercenaries are teh kind of people for whom fitting into normal social surroundings is anathema and for whom the mere thought of killing without feeling is attractive. They are the type of men who flocked into Hitler's Waffen-SS legions.