All language subtitles for Chris.the.Swiss.2018.WEBRip.x264-ION10

The time is 12.25pm.
Civil war in Yugoslavia...

On September 21st,

the Serbo-Croatian civil war
reached Karlovac.

On November 23rd, Christian Würtenberg

called Radio 24 from Croatia
for the last time.

As always, the 27-year-old from Basel

reported directly to Radio 24.

He gave us first-hand accounts of the war.

Christian only reported on what he saw.

His curiosity and courage to take risks

was his downfall.

This morning we learned

that Christian Würtenberg was killed

in Ernestinovo, a village south of Osijek.

What occurred remains unclear.

You can't choose your sibling.

You just get one.

By working together,

we became close friends.

I was taking photos for the local paper.

He chose international war reporting.

It was the place to be.

It made an impression on me!

I was at a council meeting...

taking photos worth 80 CHF...

while he was off to Sarajevo.

When he started out as a journalist,

he wrote an article about homelessness.

He wanted to experience it.

So, one rainy evening he went out

to sleep under the bushes.

He wanted to know
what it meant to be a tramp.

To have no home, no bed, no money.

Of course he had an adventurous side.

It was a tragic time.

From 1989 to 1992

the whole Eastern Bloc

started to open up.

The Soviet Union was crumbling.

Chris was very interested in it all.

He was a brave man,

to enter the fray.

But what he did in Croatia

was completely irresponsible.

I'd call it reckless.

It was a suicide mission.

No photo,

no sentence,
nothing is worth risking your life for.

No story is worth dying for.

It just isn't!

But he played with his life.

And he lost.

We expected him home for Christmas.

New Year came, but he didn't return.

Then the doorbell rang.

I opened the door and saw two people

white as sheets.

And Michi said:
"Mummy, Christian's dead."

They transferred his body to Basel.

We went together
to the Forensic Institute

to 'visit' him.

He was lying on a slab,

with a tag on his toe.

Just like in the movies.

We said goodbye to him.

They said he'd been strangled.

A forensic pathologist confirmed it.

These delicate bones here were broken.

That happens if you're strangled.

Carlos... Ramirez Sanchez...
What shall I call you?

Call me Carlos.

Are you Anja?

Good afternoon dear, how are you?

My best feelings for your cousin who died.

He was spying for the Swiss intelligence.

- That's why they executed him, I think.
- My cousin?

Yes.

It's a shame, but it's dangerous work.

He wasn't a traitor, but a Swiss agent.

He risked his life and lost it.

Anja...

This is no ordinary life.

There is a world that many don't know

where life is of little worth.

It's of little worth.

No, Rocco!

Come here, leave the man alone.

Sorry... Taxi?

Hotel Intercontinental?

Down there.

I met Christian in Zagreb.

He was a nice person, very sensitive.

We got on right away.

Christian saw war through different eyes.

Not as a spectacle.

He knew the war was interest-driven.

He wanted to cover that.

That meant reporting honestly.

So he asked the executioners: "Why?"

This cost him his life.

Yes, I remember.

In a war...

we stay together 24/7.

You can meet your death every second.

Your only family are those around you.

These relationships become very special.

No one was out

besides us crazy reporters.

No animals left.

No birds singing or dogs barking, nothing.

Just deadly silence.

We can hear our own footsteps

walking over broken glass.

We hurry across it.

All you hear

is crunching.

Or soldiers shouting out warnings.

No one knew where the snipers were.

Or where the next grenade would hit.

It occurred sporadically.

We all wanted the same:

a story.

What was happening, and where?

Our correspondent

Christian Würtenberg is in Karlovac,

in south-west Croatia.

On September 21st,

the Serbo-Croatian civil war
reached Karlovac.

The town's 50,000 inhabitants

are devastated.

Croat guards, Serb guerrillas

and Yugoslav soldiers clash at the border.

Every day they fire at each other.

Those who didn't want the war
suffer the most.

Thousands of refugees
from Vukovar and Osijek

worsen the situation.

People flee in cars and on trains

to friends and family,

or to schools or orphanages.

500,000 have been made homeless.

No one knows how it will evolve.

The situation
will certainly worsen come winter.

Christian Würtenberg, for Radio 24.

He couldn't grasp
how that war could be so dirty.

Christian was a person
who saw a dead civilian

and asked:

"Who kills civilians? That's not war!"

We argued: "That is exactly what war is!"

The war in Croatia was the start

of the two dirtiest wars

since WWII.

The international community
put the national interests

before the fundamental rights
of the civilians

of Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

That included accepting

the rise of fascism and Nazism

such as the Ustashi movement.

Just to fight
an illusion of communism in Serbia.

PIV, Prvi Internacionalni Vod.

Cheers!

Cheers!

When I heard that Chris...

had joined the PIV as a soldier,

I was shocked.

I just thought: "Shit!"

"That's not good."

Some journalists

didn't accept

their role as observers.

They became very involved in things.

They quit being journalists

to join some paramilitary groups.

Eduardo Rózsa-Flores
could be a psychiatric case study.

He was crazy, a megalomaniac.

He thought he was a second Che Guevara.

But a white Che.

He was a racist.

Chris joined my unit.

He spoke good French and English.

And German.

So I made him my radio operator.

He delivered information for me.

He was my mascot.

He was my mascot, my 'Chocolate'.

Someone recommended us for Croatia

to support the National Guard.

Our job was to mobilize the troops

and arm and train civilians...

and build up the resistance.

The mercenaries were financed by various

right-wing parties.

We were paid by the government

to train people and fight the Serbs.

To stop the Serbian advance.

In my eyes, the PIV

or International Brigade

was a bunch of right-wing criminals

from around the world who met up here.

Within the brigade,

they could kill legally.

They killed for fun.

A bunch of mad men.

Hello, are you Mr. Besson?

- Yes, are you the Swiss lady?
- Yes, I am.

Yeah, I met him briefly.

It was a very weird platoon over there.

A very weird unit.

There were good, solid ex-pro soldiers

who knew their business and what to do.

There was also a handful of real idiots.

Adrenalin's pumping like hell.

You're stressed out like hell.

Fear, adrenalin and everything - and BANG!

You kill very easily and very quickly.

The problem is, when the war ends

and that pressure's gone away.

Then it's very hard
to live with what you've done.

The mentality you've got
is at times downright bloody evil.

Because it's the only way to survive.

He was like a fly in a saucer of milk.

He stood out.

He was a nice guy, not a soldier.

He was ill-equipped. He knew nothing.

He only lived for his book.

He irritated the others.

He irritated them on patrol.

This motherfucking Swiss.

They never returned to the front line.

They went to the villages around Osijek.

Where local Serbs remained,

unable to flee.

They threatened them

and 'cleansed' the area by killing them.

It drove you crazy, everyone went mad.

Me too.

How can someone take a pistol

and shoot a baby
being nursed by its mother?

How can you use kids as targets for fun?

Mothers would send their kids with knives

to cut slices of dead horse to eat.

How could the Chetniks fire at them?

And we did the same to them.

It was a dirty war.

Chris told me that Opus Dei

was financing Eduardo Flores.

He was a staunch Catholic.

He forced people to pray.

He made them go to mass.

They said grace before and after meals.

Chris spoke of Flores

and his growing religious mania.

Christian
was one of the first to see the PIV

as a cover for recruiting

mercenaries with a concrete ideology.

Ultra right-wing and ultra catholic.

Opus Dei is a religious organization

with great economic power.

Opus Dei

served the interests of the Church

and of Pope John Paul II.

He wanted the war to be a religious war.

Eduardo invited me

to celebrate Christmas with them.

I said: "Okay, I'll drop by!"

"It's a good story, okay."

I said: "Christian Würtenberg is here."

"I'd like to interview him."

"Is that possible?"

In the interview, Chris said:

"I can't tell you now,

because I'm writing a book about it."

"As long as I am part of the PIV,

I can't give you any details."

That's when I stopped the interview.

There were 'bad vibes'.

During the war,
I relied on my gut instinct.

If I felt uneasy, I turned back.

It was the last time I saw him.

He didn't seem to be in danger.

We agreed to meet
on the 29th of December in Zagreb.

He said he wanted to publish the book.

I said: "I hope Eduardo doesn't know."

Chris said: "Yes, I told him."

I said: "How could you?"

"That's insane!"

I think Christian was clever and honest.

He tried to be more honest than clever.

He did good work.

But he forgot he was studying assassins.

Bloody amateurs.

Amateur brigade.

Shit.

It didn't surprise me, to be honest.

I was shocked, but not surprised.

There was a plot

to kill Christian.

They planned it.

I am convinced that Eduardo

ordered his people to kill Chris.

Who gave the order to kill him? Eduardo.

Who tightened the scarf?

Who did the deed? I don't know.

At least two or three were involved.

Christian too participated in missions.

In the trenches, at night, in the dark.

Unfortunately, Christian died.

He didn't fall in combat,
he was strangled.

He lagged behind and was ambushed.

We do the same to the others.

Only we don't use strangulation.

Technically it's too uncertain.

We cut the throat.

After Chris' death, it was very hard

to gather information here.

We all knew

it was no accident, but Eduardo's doing.

We contacted

the English photographer Paul Jenks.

He was a close friend of Christian's.

Paul Jenks went to question Eduardo

about Christian's death.

While he was taking photos

of where Christian had been killed,

a sniper in the distance

shot him in the head.

It took just one shot.

Then we learned

we were blacklisted too.

We left the country overnight.

That man, Chris,

caused our family great suffering.

It changed me, it changed my mother...

and my sister.

Our whole family was devastated.

Sometimes, I wish he'd come back.

And that we could sit on the bed

giggling and being silly.

I do miss that.

You could only do that with him.

He had a way about him, which I miss.

I spent hours with a psychologist

to learn to stop blaming myself.

I wasn't in the PIV, I didn't have a gun,

I didn't risk my life, not me.

That was someone else.

That someone's an asshole, right?