Former acquaintances in Budapest say Flores found work as a journalist and correspondent’s assistant for the BBC’s Spanish-language service and Spanish newspaper
La Vanguardia , which took him to former Yugoslavia as it descended into war in the early 1990s.
At this point, Flores abandoned journalism and joined the fighting, helping to establish a foreign volunteers brigade based around the northern Croatian town of Osijek, and fought for Croatia’s independence from Belgrade’s rule.
“The Serbs detained Eduardo for three or four days, beat him up and accused him of being a spy. He was livid and told a Croatian journalist soon afterwards that he wanted to fight,” a close friend of Flores in Budapest told
The Irish Times on condition of anonymity.
Flores claimed to have been wounded several times in Croatia, and to have been promoted to the rank of colonel and given Croatian citizenship by then-president Franjo Tudjman.
But the Balkan wars also cast a dark shadow on Flores’ reputation, and caused several old Budapest acquaintances to shun him, particularly as rumours swirled that he may have ordered the killing of a Swiss and a British journalist who went to Croatia to investigate his volunteers brigade.