Speaker 1: Col Zone Media.
Speaker 2: In early March of nineteen ninety four, three men left
Speaker 2: the Bosnian city of Siroki brieg. German mercenaries Falk Semang
Speaker 2: and Ralph Morakaz were eager for a change of scenery,
Speaker 2: not because they had tired of their lives as soldiers
Speaker 2: of fortune, but because they were in a bit of
Speaker 2: hot water after murdering two of their fellow mercenaries. And
Speaker 2: Ronald Douster, a Dutch mercenary they'd worked with on his
Speaker 2: last stint with the Croatian forces, was happy to recruit
Speaker 2: them to a new mission, one far away from the
Speaker 2: mess they'd made in the Balkans. Before they left, they
Speaker 2: took a few souvenirs, a couple of AK forty sevens,
Speaker 2: one pistol, eight kilos of Semtex, a plastic explosive, and
Speaker 2: a crate of hand grenades. They stashed the stolen weapons
Speaker 2: under the seats of the old citron that Doyster was driving.
Speaker 2: Doyster was no stranger to committing crimes across borders. He'd
Speaker 2: been a soldier for hire for over a decade and
Speaker 2: had served a bit of time in Ireland for arms smuggling.
Speaker 2: He was confident that His expertly forged un press credentials
Speaker 2: were all they'd need to ensure a clean getaway without
Speaker 2: anyone searching the vehicle, and he was right. After driving
Speaker 2: nearly two thousand kilometers, they reached their first destination, the
Speaker 2: Belgian city of Russilara. There they met with Roger Spinewen,
Speaker 2: the leader of a Belgian Neo Nazi group called the
Speaker 2: Order of Flemish Militants. He was a bit of a
Speaker 2: legend in certain circles. He was already an old man,
Speaker 2: but in the seventies he'd led a small group of
Speaker 2: Belgian Nazis in a daring heist of sorts, successfully stealing
Speaker 2: the corpse of a long dead Nazi priest from his
Speaker 2: grip in Austria to be reinterred on his home soil
Speaker 2: in Belgium. And on that day in March of nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety four, Spinewin paid Douster eleven thousand Deutsche marks for
Speaker 2: the stolen weapons, but he gave him one more thing directions.
Speaker 2: It had been Spinewen who had asked Douster to return
Speaker 2: to Bosnia this one last time, not as a mercenary
Speaker 2: this time, but to fetch hardware and recruits for a
Speaker 2: new mission, one in South Africa. The Aeging Neo Nazi
Speaker 2: had spent his life fighting for fascism at home in Belgium.
Speaker 2: His son John was a member of Parliament as a
Speaker 2: leader in the far right party Vlam's Block. But as
Speaker 2: the world continued to change around him, he hoped to
Speaker 2: retire one day in a beautiful white ethno state in
Speaker 2: Southern Africa. Here on the eve of the end of apartheid, though,
Speaker 2: that dream was starting to look less and less likely,
Speaker 2: unless they could incite enough violence in those final months
Speaker 2: to convince the white population of South Africa that they
Speaker 2: needed to secede to form a new pure white nation.
Speaker 2: And this was the task he'd recruited these mercenaries for.
Speaker 2: It wasn't safe to depart directly from Belgium, the authorities
Speaker 2: there were already a little suspicious. Instead, the mercenaries took
Speaker 2: the ferry across the English Channel to Ramsgate, a seaside
Speaker 2: town in Kent. There, with an introduction from Spinowin, they
Speaker 2: made their next contacts, members of the British fascist group,
Speaker 2: the League of Saint George. They spent a few days
Speaker 2: there making final preparations for their journey with the help
Speaker 2: of their new English friends. This was becoming something of
Speaker 2: a routine for the members of the League of Saint George.
Speaker 2: Just two months earlier, they'd hosted another batch of German
Speaker 2: mercenaries making the same trip. They didn't know just yet
Speaker 2: that one of those men was already dead. On the
Speaker 2: evening before Doyster and the Germans were scheduled to fly
Speaker 2: out of Heathrow, Roger Spinwen dispatched one of his sons
Speaker 2: to Ramsgate with one final message for the mercenaries. Willie
Speaker 2: Spinowen handed Ronald Doyster a sealed envelope and passed along
Speaker 2: his father's order. Doyster was to personally hand deliver this
Speaker 2: envelope to the woman who would meet him at the airport,
Speaker 2: a woman named Monica Huggin. I'm Molly Conger and this
Speaker 2: is weird, little guys. This is the part of the
Speaker 2: story where we finally rejoined them women. We started with
Speaker 2: Monica Huggett Stone. It's been a long, strange journey. We
Speaker 2: started out a few weeks ago in twenty twelve in Sacramento, California,
Speaker 2: American neo Nazis from the Golden State Skinheads were rallying
Speaker 2: outside the state Capitol holding the flag of apartheid South Africa,
Speaker 2: when counter protesters from a nearby occupy encampment showed up
Speaker 2: to heckle them. What an odd site, those skinheads in
Speaker 2: their black jackets rallying for the imaginary cause of a
Speaker 2: white genocide against South African farmers. That rally was one
Speaker 2: of more than a dozen simultaneous rallies across the United
Speaker 2: States that day, though they were mostly poorly attended and
Speaker 2: some were barely publicized, and all of them were organized
Speaker 2: by a short lived Aryan Nations affiliated group called the
Speaker 2: South Africa Project, and that group itself was almost certainly
Speaker 2: really just two people, a longtime Arian Nations member named
Speaker 2: Maurice Goulette and a mysterious woman in Louisiana named Monica Stone.
Speaker 2: I'm always surprised by the twists and turns that these
Speaker 2: stories take. Once you start turning over a few rocks,
Speaker 2: there's always some bizarre new ankle that takes us miles
Speaker 2: from where I thought we were going. But this one
Speaker 2: has been the strangest ride of any weird little guy
Speaker 2: so far. In this chapter of the story, we'll try
Speaker 2: to trace the paths of these European mercenaries from Bosnia
Speaker 2: to South Africa. It turns out there was an international
Speaker 2: network to funnel guns for hire from one conflict to another.
Speaker 2: And as cloak and dagger as all of that sounds,
Speaker 2: it wasn't really a secret, not entirely. Searchlight magazine had
Speaker 2: reported on the scheme months before. Those German mercenaries even
Speaker 2: bought their plane tickets. Every year for decades now, European
Speaker 2: Neo Nazis gather in the Belgian city of Dixmude for
Speaker 2: an international fascist get together, and at the event in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three, there was a lot of talk about
Speaker 2: changing their focus, about redirecting mercenaries from the Balkans to
Speaker 2: South Africa, and plans were made. At least fifteen mercenaries
Speaker 2: were pledged to be dispatched in early nineteen ninety four
Speaker 2: with plans to fight alongside Robert vent Honter's Borostock Party.
Speaker 2: All of this was published in print in English in
Speaker 2: the fall of nineteen ninety three, months before this actually happened.
Speaker 2: That same publication. Searchlight Magazine would eventually uncover more of
Speaker 2: the d tales about what went on at Dixmuda in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three. It was at this summit that Roger
Speaker 2: Spinewin recruited Ronald Doyster to return to Bosnia to recruit
Speaker 2: more mercenaries for South Africa. And according to another source,
Speaker 2: it was also sometime in late nineteen ninety three that
Speaker 2: Roger Spinwin paid a visit to South Africa himself at
Speaker 2: the invitation of Monica Huggett. I mentioned a few weeks
Speaker 2: ago that the first step in tracking this Monica Stone,
Speaker 2: the one who organized those rallies in twenty twelve, back
Speaker 2: to her home country of South Africa, was figuring out
Speaker 2: her maiden name, which is Huggitt. And I did that
Speaker 2: by digging up old corporate filings for a Christian identity
Speaker 2: church called the New Christian Crusade Church. And the New
Speaker 2: Christian Crusade Church was run by a man named James K. Warner.
Speaker 2: I don't think Warner necessarily qualifies as a big name,
Speaker 2: but he shows up in a lot of big stories.
Speaker 2: He was an early member of George Lincoln Rockwell's American
Speaker 2: Nazi Party. He was a leading member of the short
Speaker 2: lived National States Rights Party, and in his clan days,
Speaker 2: he was a very close friend of David Duke, I've
Speaker 2: left myself a note to come back to James K Warner.
Speaker 2: I think there's some real weird little guy stuff going
Speaker 2: on here, and I do have a quick correction to make.
Speaker 2: As much as it pains me, I just realized I
Speaker 2: misspoke in the last episode where I mentioned James K Warner,
Speaker 2: I called him Robert K Warner careless. Honestly, I should
Speaker 2: have caught that. But to be honest with you, I'm
Speaker 2: recording this at one in the morning, and this is
Speaker 2: early by my usual standards. I'm always a little down
Speaker 2: to the wire. But I think what happened there was
Speaker 2: just a slight mix up, because, in my defense, James
Speaker 2: Conrad W. Warner did have a brother named Robert L. Warner,
Speaker 2: and he did use his brother's name on the deeds
Speaker 2: to some of the church property. But it turns out
Speaker 2: that Monica's connection to Robert K Warner may be the
Speaker 2: answer to a question that's been bothering me for weeks.
Speaker 2: How on earth did a woman in South Africa manage
Speaker 2: to join the Ku Klux Klan. If you recall the
Speaker 2: story in the episode two weeks ago, Monica Hugget was
Speaker 2: arrested in nineteen eighty one in connection with a series
Speaker 2: of pro apartheid bombings by a group that called itself
Speaker 2: the Vid Commando, and after her arrest, she agreed to
Speaker 2: testify against the Italian fascists that she'd helped carry out
Speaker 2: those bombings. During the trial, she said she was a
Speaker 2: member of the American Ku Klux Clan, and she told
Speaker 2: the authorities that the books they'd used as a guide
Speaker 2: for making those bombs had been sent to her by
Speaker 2: her American Clan contacts, So she wasn't just a member
Speaker 2: of a Ku Klux Klan style group that operated independently
Speaker 2: in South Africa. She's saying that she has active contact
Speaker 2: with the Klan in the United States because there is
Speaker 2: a big difference there. There have been groups in other
Speaker 2: countries that have adopted the esthetic and the ideology of
Speaker 2: the clan without necessarily maintaining meaningful contact with the group
Speaker 2: they're modeling themselves after. In other examples, what looks like
Speaker 2: a foreign iteration of the clan is actually just an
Speaker 2: American who happens to be living overseas. In the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: there was an American serviceman stationed in Germany who claimed
Speaker 2: that he was leading an active clan group in Bavaria,
Speaker 2: and in the Dennis Mahon story, we saw an American
Speaker 2: clansman who traveled internationally trying to spark an interest in
Speaker 2: American clan aesthetics and ideology, but with relatively little success.
Speaker 2: So what Monica's talking about here is something a little different,
Speaker 2: and I was stumped truly. As we'll get to later
Speaker 2: on in the story, I can absolutely connect Monica huggets
Speaker 2: Stone to the American Ku Klux Klan by the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2: I've got the Federal election commissioned filings to prove that
Speaker 2: that's easy. But I still have no answers when it
Speaker 2: comes to the question of klansmen in South Africa in
Speaker 2: the late nineteen seventies, not in any concrete way. But
Speaker 2: I do have a theory. One of the sources I've
Speaker 2: relied on heavily throughout this series is a nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: nine thesis by Mida Visser on the white fascist movements
Speaker 2: in South Africa in the twentieth century, and she sort
Speaker 2: of hints at this idea. She writes, quote, the activities
Speaker 2: of the clan in South Africa are obscure, although the
Speaker 2: police had no concrete evidence that the movement was active
Speaker 2: in South Africa. There were claims in the press in
Speaker 2: the late seventies that branch has existed in the country,
Speaker 2: and so in Visser's thesis she gives a couple of
Speaker 2: examples that are definitely evidence of that esthetic copycat behavior
Speaker 2: I'm talking about. So, when the VIC Commando took credit
Speaker 2: for those bombings in nineteen eighty, the letters they sent
Speaker 2: to the press had a symbol in the letterhead that
Speaker 2: was almost identical to the logo used by American clan groups.
Speaker 2: And in nineteen ninety, when two members of the Order
Speaker 2: of Death went on trial for murder, their supporters packed
Speaker 2: the courtroom and they were all wearing little clan lapel pens,
Speaker 2: and one of them even told a reporter the Order
Speaker 2: is long gone. It's the Ku Klux Klan now. In
Speaker 2: an unrelated side note, just too to wrap up a
Speaker 2: loose end from the last episode, I can tell I've
Speaker 2: spent too much time digging around for details I'm not
Speaker 2: going to need for this story. When side characters start
Speaker 2: to look really familiar. When I was reading that anecdote
Speaker 2: about the Order of Death trial in nineteen ninety, I
Speaker 2: recognized the names of the murderers. Cornelius Lottering and Fanny
Speaker 2: Goosen were two of the ten members of the Africaner
Speaker 2: Resistance movement who were arrested in the summer of nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: So when they scooped up Leonard Wienendahl and Horst Cleans,
Speaker 2: Lottering and Gusen were in that bunch. And I mentioned
Speaker 2: in last week's episode that I couldn't exactly tell what
Speaker 2: became of all ten of those men, but two of
Speaker 2: them had escaped from custody, and those two were Lottering
Speaker 2: in Gusen, So I guess they found them again because
Speaker 2: they did get convicted of murder. But back to the
Speaker 2: question of the clan, I could have left it there,
Speaker 2: but I think you probably know by now that I didn't.
Speaker 2: Because he dig just a little bit deeper into the past.
Speaker 2: There was a man in South Africa who called himself
Speaker 2: the leader of the South African Ku Klux Klan in
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties and into the seventies. He died in
Speaker 2: the late seventies. His name was Raymond kirch Rudman, and
Speaker 2: by the time he was trying to get a South
Speaker 2: African clan going, he was already pretty old, and he
Speaker 2: was decades into his career as a professional anti Semite
Speaker 2: with impressive international connections. Aside from his clan activities, Rudman
Speaker 2: was also the leader of an Afrikaner nationalist group called
Speaker 2: the Boronaci, originally founded by Many Merits. Meretz's son, also
Speaker 2: called many Merits, was a prominent figure in the Africaner
Speaker 2: resistance movement during the same time period as Monica Huggett,
Speaker 2: and Rudman also led a group called the Anglo Norman Union.
Speaker 2: I can't find much information about the extent to which
Speaker 2: that group actually operated in South Africa, like did it
Speaker 2: actually have real members, But in nineteen sixty five Rudman
Speaker 2: did use the group to join the World Union of
Speaker 2: National Socialists. That was an effort by George Lincoln Rockwell's
Speaker 2: American Nazi Party and Colin Jordan, who was then the
Speaker 2: head of the National Socialist movement in the United Kingdom,
Speaker 2: to form I guess exactly what it sounds a World
Speaker 2: Union of Nazi groups. But when it comes to the Clan,
Speaker 2: there's not much written, at least not that I was
Speaker 2: able to find about the history of the clan in
Speaker 2: South Africa. But everything that does exist has Ray Rudman's
Speaker 2: name on it. Last year, doctor William Robert Billips completed
Speaker 2: his dissertation at Emory University, and I know, I know
Speaker 2: that dissertation has the answers I'm looking for, but it
Speaker 2: is currently embargoed and not available to read. But a
Speaker 2: write up about his research tells me I'm on the
Speaker 2: right track. He was researching anti Semitic bombings in the
Speaker 2: United States during the Civil Rights era when he came
Speaker 2: across one of the same sources I did, an old
Speaker 2: mention of Ray Rudman trying to recruit for a clan
Speaker 2: group in South Africa in the early nineteen sixties. Phillips
Speaker 2: was able to secure grant funding to spend several weeks
Speaker 2: in South Africa at the University of the Free State,
Speaker 2: where Rudman's personal papers are held in a special collection. Again,
Speaker 2: unfortunately for me, I can't read Phillips' research, but I
Speaker 2: do have the finding aid for Rudman's papers. I can't
Speaker 2: actually see what's written. The documents aren't digitized. A finding
Speaker 2: aid is just an inventory listing the contents of various
Speaker 2: boxes and folders, and I would love to get my
Speaker 2: hands on some of those letters because. Listed in that
Speaker 2: inventory are entries for correspondents between Ray Rudman and the
Speaker 2: New Christian Crusade Church dated as early as the sixties
Speaker 2: and seventies. There's also an entry listing correspondence between Ray
Speaker 2: Rudman and the National States Rights Party dated from the
Speaker 2: nineteen fifties. The inventory also lists more than forty books
Speaker 2: in Rudman's collection that were published by James K. Warner,
Speaker 2: either through his Sons of Liberty Press or the New
Speaker 2: Christian Crusade Church. A similar finding aid for the personal
Speaker 2: papers of James K. Warner, held by the University of
Speaker 2: Wyoming also lists correspondents between James Warner and Ray Rudman,
Speaker 2: and Warner's Nazi publishing outfit, The Sons of Liberty Press,
Speaker 2: also published and sold English language versions of texts by
Speaker 2: South African anti semi Johann Schumann, an African internationalist politician.
Speaker 2: Yap Maree. So, I can't tell you exactly how Monica
Speaker 2: Huggett came to join the Ku Klux Klan, but there
Speaker 2: is some really solid connective tissue here. It doesn't feel
Speaker 2: as random now. So when she moved to the United States,
Speaker 2: she was a close enough associate of James K Warner
Speaker 2: that he put her in charge of his new Christian
Speaker 2: Crusade church, and that has to have something to do
Speaker 2: with the fact that archives show that he was an
Speaker 2: active communication with the far right in South Africa from
Speaker 2: his earliest days in the movement. It looks like I
Speaker 2: have some more digging to do on the subject of
Speaker 2: the Fascist International, because the number of connections here is
Speaker 2: honestly pretty staggering to me. James K Warner visited England
Speaker 2: in the said to speak at a meeting of the
Speaker 2: League of Saint George. In nineteen eighty Our Belgian Nazi
Speaker 2: Roger Spinewin was deported from the United States while he
Speaker 2: was here visiting members of the National States Rights Party,
Speaker 2: and our South African clansman Ray Rudman, was listed as
Speaker 2: the South African correspondent in issues of a British fascist
Speaker 2: magazine in the nineteen seventies. All of these guys are
Speaker 2: connected going back decades. But I've been promising to get
Speaker 2: to this part of the story for weeks now, the
Speaker 2: part where a handful of German mercenaries get into a
Speaker 2: shootout with the South African police in March of nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety four A few episodes ago. I told you that
Speaker 2: one of the first places I found Monica Huggett's name
Speaker 2: was in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission's final
Speaker 2: Report in Volume two. The portion of the report that
Speaker 2: deals with quote the Commission of Gross Violations of Human Rights,
Speaker 2: Chapter seven political violence in the Era of Negotiations and Transition.
Speaker 2: Under the subheading links with international right wing groups, the
Speaker 2: report reads. The first link between ultra right terrorism and
Speaker 2: foreign agencies came to light in nineteen eighty two when
Speaker 2: mister Fabiomiello, mister Massimo Bolo, and mister Eugenio's Opice, all
Speaker 2: white foreign expatriots known as the White Commando, were convicted
Speaker 2: of the nineteen seventy nine bombing of the offices of
Speaker 2: prominent academic doctor Jan Lombard. Originally mister Kus ver Mullin
Speaker 2: and Miss Monica hugget were arrested with them, but Huggitt
Speaker 2: turned state's witness and Vermullin was released after a few days.
Speaker 2: Huggett's name was subsequently linked to a shootout in March
Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety four between the South African police and
Speaker 2: three German right wingers in the Donkerhoak area. One German
Speaker 2: right winger, mister Stephen Rays, was arrested, mister Thomas Kuns
Speaker 2: was shot dead, and a third, mister Horse Cleans, was
Speaker 2: later arrested. A fourth, mister Alexander Nydeline, was later charged
Speaker 2: in the Cullen And Magistrates Court for illegal possession of
Speaker 2: a firearm. And I read that paragraph before you've heard
Speaker 2: that bit, and at this point you know some of
Speaker 2: the back story that paragraph is talking about. Two weeks ago,
Speaker 2: we talked about the vit commando bombings in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: and we spent most of the last episode talking about
Speaker 2: one of those men, Horst Cleans. Before that shootout in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four, Glen's had been involved in a nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine attack on a United Nations outpost in Namibia,
Speaker 2: killing a security guard and later murdering a police constable
Speaker 2: when he and his accomplices escaped from custody. And at
Speaker 2: some point I teased you a little bit with a
Speaker 2: story about Alexander Nydline. He was the German neo Nazi
Speaker 2: who swore allegiance to Donald Trump at a fascist rally
Speaker 2: in Croatia in twenty seventeen don so we know where
Speaker 2: Horst Cleans was in the early nineties. He was in
Speaker 2: South Africa, But how did those other three men actually
Speaker 2: get there? In nineteen ninety four, Alexander Ndline, Stephen Rays
Speaker 2: and Thomas Konst follow the same path as the mercenaries
Speaker 2: recruited by Ronald Douster. They deserted from the Convicts Battalion,
Speaker 2: a paramilitary unit of the Croatian Defense Council made up
Speaker 2: of prisoners and foreign mercenaries, and they left Bosnia with
Speaker 2: stolen weapons. Then, with the help of the League of
Speaker 2: Saint George in England, they made their way down to
Speaker 2: South Africa, and just like Ronald Doyster, they were given
Speaker 2: the name of a woman who would pick them up
Speaker 2: from the airport, Monica Huggett. And here is another place
Speaker 2: in my research for this story where I found a
Speaker 2: very unlikely source of information that I just couldn't have
Speaker 2: gotten anywhere else. Two weeks ago I had to give
Speaker 2: my begrudging thanks to the Central Intelligence Agency after discovering
Speaker 2: English translations of South African news stories in archived reports
Speaker 2: from the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service. And this week
Speaker 2: I have an even more unsavory source to thank, though
Speaker 2: he isn't around to hear it.
Speaker 3: This is the prosecution's appeal concerning Praliac in all other
Speaker 3: respects affirms the sentence of twenty years of imprisonment, subject
Speaker 3: to credit being given on the rule one oh one
Speaker 3: sea of the rules for the period he has already
Speaker 3: spent in the atention step, Prodiac, you may be seated,
Speaker 3: you Fortuna, stop, please please sit down.
Speaker 2: That audio might not sound familiar, but if you're extremely online,
Speaker 2: you've seen mimified images of this moment used as a
Speaker 2: reaction give a thousand times. I know it. I'm sure
Speaker 2: you know the one I'm talking about. It's a white
Speaker 2: haired old man in a suit and he's drinking from
Speaker 2: a small vial. That man is slowbodown Praliac. He died
Speaker 2: by suicide in twenty sis seventeen, and the meme shows
Speaker 2: the moment that he produced a small vial of cyanide
Speaker 2: from his pocket after a judge at the Hague announced
Speaker 2: that his sentence for war crimes would be upheld. I
Speaker 2: don't speak Croatian, but news reports translated his last words
Speaker 2: in that video as judges slobodon Proliac is not a
Speaker 2: war criminal. With disdain, I reject your verdict, and then
Speaker 2: he knocks back the vial of cyanide. We don't have
Speaker 2: to get into the crimes against humanity that Slobodon Proliac
Speaker 2: was convicted of by the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia.
Speaker 2: He doesn't really factor in directly to our story at all,
Speaker 2: but he did choose to defend himself without an attorney
Speaker 2: during his war crimes trial, and as part of that effort,
Speaker 2: he had a website dedicated to proving his innocence, and
Speaker 2: that website is actually still online today. But the documents
Speaker 2: that I found most useful in researching this story don't
Speaker 2: appear to be accessible on the current version of the site.
Speaker 2: So buried in this poorly organized series of files on
Speaker 2: an archived version of this war criminal's website, I found
Speaker 2: something terribly interesting. All of the existing reporting that I
Speaker 2: could find about Alexander Ninelein, Stephen Rays, and Thomas Koonst
Speaker 2: and their whereabouts in late nineteen ninety three seems to
Speaker 2: rely on one of those documents, an arrest warrant signed
Speaker 2: by their commanding officer, a war criminal named Malad Nalatilic,
Speaker 2: which I know I've not pronounced correctly, so we'll just
Speaker 2: call him by his nickname Teuta. Everyone else did. When
Speaker 2: those three German mercenaries deserted from Teuta's Ragtag Convicts btel
Speaker 2: in the middle of December of nineteen ninety three, he
Speaker 2: wrote a memo requesting arrest warrants. Translated, it reads, on
Speaker 2: December sixteenth, nineteen ninety three, members of the Convicts Battalion
Speaker 2: fled from Sierroki Brieg to an unknown destination after spending
Speaker 2: three to four days in the unit after stealing weapons
Speaker 2: and ammunition. The memo goes on to specify that, aside
Speaker 2: from their names and the fact that they'd been briefly
Speaker 2: affiliated with the unit, he had no additional information about
Speaker 2: these three men. It's possible that a lot is lost
Speaker 2: in translation here, but it kind of looks like he's
Speaker 2: really going out of his way to distance himself from
Speaker 2: these men, because he's very explicit that they were only
Speaker 2: there for a few days and he doesn't know anything
Speaker 2: about them. These guys are strangers to him, and I
Speaker 2: guess there's no reason to doubt that. It's what every
Speaker 2: write up about the incident says. And who knows maybe
Speaker 2: they got all the way there and they realized war
Speaker 2: isn't very fun and they changed their minds. That makes
Speaker 2: plenty of sense, right, But I think it would be
Speaker 2: terribly naive to take a war criminal at his word
Speaker 2: because he was lying in that chaotic document dump. On
Speaker 2: Slobodon Prolac's website, I found Tutah's request for the issuance
Speaker 2: of those arrest warrants, and I found the arrest warrants themselves,
Speaker 2: and they were both signed by Tuta. I clicked through
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe one hundred documents that mostly meant
Speaker 2: absolutely nothing to me. I didn't really know what I
Speaker 2: was looking for or what might even be there for
Speaker 2: me to find. But I did find another document bearing
Speaker 2: the signature of the commander of the Convex Battalion, and
Speaker 2: this one was dated December second, nineteen ninety three, a
Speaker 2: full two weeks before those men deserted, and it's a
Speaker 2: list of soldiers under Tuta's command, and it appears to
Speaker 2: have been written on a typewriter, and next to the
Speaker 2: name of each soldier who had been paid for their
Speaker 2: service in the month of November, he had drawn a
Speaker 2: check mark in pencil and there twenty four pages into
Speaker 2: this list of names are Alexander Nydeline, Stephen Rays, and
Speaker 2: Thomas Kunst. Nydeline and Coonst both have a check mark
Speaker 2: next to their name, indicating that they'd been paid for
Speaker 2: the month of November. Nydline has over the years taken
Speaker 2: issue with journalists who characterize him as a mercenary, often
Speaker 2: arguing that he never actually got paid, so he can't
Speaker 2: be called a mercenary. So this document at least offers
Speaker 2: some possible rebuttal to that. Next to Steven and raised name,
Speaker 2: though there isn't a check mark. Instead, there's a little
Speaker 2: symbol that looks like it might be the letter D.
Speaker 2: I think the soldiers who have died are the ones
Speaker 2: with a little cross next to their name, and soldiers
Speaker 2: who are in the hospital either have a B or
Speaker 2: the word bolnikka which means hospital written out. And I
Speaker 2: couldn't find any commonly used word for something like dead, deceased, killed, deserted, quit, captured,
Speaker 2: any any words like that. I couldn't find any that
Speaker 2: would start with D in Croatian. But there are some
Speaker 2: words and phrases related to the concept of authorized leave
Speaker 2: or a permitted absence that do start with D in Croatian.
Speaker 2: I'm just spitballing here. I have no idea what it
Speaker 2: could mean. I don't know anything about running a mercenary
Speaker 2: unit to do war crimes, and I don't speak Croatian.
Speaker 2: I'm just guessing. But regardless of what these mysterious little
Speaker 2: symbols mean, here's their commanding officer's signature on a document
Speaker 2: listing their names two weeks before. He says they had
Speaker 2: only just shown up in the last couple of days.
Speaker 2: The obvious next question, then, is why would he lie
Speaker 2: about how long they'd been with the unit. The short answer,
Speaker 2: obviously is I don't know. I don't think anybody knows,
Speaker 2: but if I had to guess, I would say he
Speaker 2: was covering his ass. The Convicts Battalion was becoming increasingly
Speaker 2: un popular by late nineteen ninety three. It was again
Speaker 2: exactly what it sounds like. It was made up of
Speaker 2: people who had been in prison for violent crimes, as
Speaker 2: well as foreign mercenaries who had volunteered to commit violent crimes,
Speaker 2: and they were out of control. A letter sent to
Speaker 2: a Croatian general signed by another officer that same month,
Speaker 2: December of nineteen ninety three, complained about Tuta's convicts running
Speaker 2: a muck. They weren't just committing war crimes, but they
Speaker 2: were killing and raping military and police personnel on their
Speaker 2: own side, and their commanding officer was protecting them. So
Speaker 2: I can only assume that he was trying to distance
Speaker 2: himself from another embarrassing act of misconduct by this ragtag
Speaker 2: group of foreign murderers when these three Germans deserted the
Speaker 2: unit with a bunch of stolen guns and bombs. Other
Speaker 2: sources I found writing about the actions of mercenaries in
Speaker 2: the Bosnian War single out the German mercenaries in particular
Speaker 2: for their brutality. Rob Kratt, a frequent contributor to Soldier
Speaker 2: of Fortune magazine, wrote in his book Save the Last
Speaker 2: Bullet for Yourself that the Germans he served with during
Speaker 2: the Bosnian War had a terrible habit of cutting the
Speaker 2: ears off the people they killed and keeping them as trophies.
Speaker 2: Austrian journalist Christoph Santner co wrote egayetest rambo Schpielen, which
Speaker 2: translates to I'm going to play Rambo now with former mercenary.
Speaker 2: Wolfgang Nighter writer and Knight writer recounts seeing a German
Speaker 2: mercenary hand a live grenade to a seven year old
Speaker 2: Muslim boy in the Bosnian city of Mostar as a
Speaker 2: joke of some sort. The mercenary told the boy it
Speaker 2: was a toy, and the child was blown to pieces
Speaker 2: moments later. There was no shortitch of violence in the
Speaker 2: Balkans in the early nineties. There's plenty of blame to
Speaker 2: go around, so it seems all the more remarkable that
Speaker 2: even in this context, other actual war criminals, people sentenced
Speaker 2: to life in prison at the Hague, people who were
Speaker 2: guns for hire, they were looking at these German mercenaries
Speaker 2: and saying that's a little bit too much.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I hesitate to build a theory on the sand of speculation.
Speaker 2: But if that little D next to Stephen Rays's name
Speaker 2: does happen to mean that he was on leave in November,
Speaker 2: that does line up with some other sort of hazy
Speaker 2: details about this time period, because again we know that
Speaker 2: there was an international effort to recruit mercenaries to travel
Speaker 2: to South Africa. The two men from the beginning of
Speaker 2: this episode, Fox Samang and Ralph Morajz, were recruited by
Speaker 2: Ronald Doyster personally when he traveled to Bosnia in early
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four, and by all accounts, Nideline Rays and
Speaker 2: coonst were recruited by Horsed Clens. But how because remember
Speaker 2: Horsed Glens had been in South Africa for years at
Speaker 2: this point. He escaped from custody in Namibia nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: nine and he fled back to South Africa. He was
Speaker 2: arrested again in the summer of nineteen ninety in connection
Speaker 2: with the Ordoboro folk bombings, and he didn't end up
Speaker 2: getting charged with anything, but he spent a while in
Speaker 2: jail while South African courts tried to figure out if
Speaker 2: they needed to extradite him to Namibia. He was eventually,
Speaker 2: probably in late nineteen ninety two, released on bond depending
Speaker 2: a final decision in the extradition matter, and then he disappeared.
Speaker 2: It is possible, I guess that Glenn's could have gone
Speaker 2: to Bosnia at some point in nineteen ninety three, but
Speaker 2: I don't think so because there's a much more likely explanation.
Speaker 1: Fan fass On torsis not nice and sent Nsael that
Speaker 1: there's some about er v Moule's striker game at MNEM.
Speaker 1: Dolphin said Oskar Wolf and Vaughn.
Speaker 2: That probably didn't mean anything to you. I speak a
Speaker 2: little German, but that guy's accent was a little tricky
Speaker 2: for me. I had to ask a friend who was
Speaker 2: fluent for some help with this one. That's a clip
Speaker 2: from a segment that aired on a German TV news program,
Speaker 2: and the man speaking is an unnamed hotel guest. Unnamed,
Speaker 2: probably because the hotel in question was a cedy establishment
Speaker 2: in Hamburg's Red light district, and the man is recalling
Speaker 2: for a reporter from Derspiegel an incident that happened in
Speaker 2: late October nineteen ninety three. Stephen Rays was thrown out
Speaker 2: of the hotel after some kind of loud argument and
Speaker 2: just Stephen Rays. According to researchers from Germany's anti fascist Infoblot,
Speaker 2: Klen's was also spotted in Hamburg in October of nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety three, and we know Stephen Rays did go back
Speaker 2: to Bosnia after he got kicked out of that CD
Speaker 2: motel because he deserted in December. So what it looks
Speaker 2: like to me is that Rays made contact with Klen's
Speaker 2: in Hamburg in October, and then he went back to
Speaker 2: Bosnia and told his friends about this exciting new opportunity.
Speaker 2: All they had to do was steal a bunch of
Speaker 2: guns and find a way to get to England. What
Speaker 2: we do know for certain is that all three of
Speaker 2: those mercenaries left Bosnia on December sixteenth, nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: and on December thirtieth, they robbed a post office in
Speaker 2: the German city of Lubec, making off with around eighty
Speaker 2: five hundred Deutsche marks. I don't entirely know how to
Speaker 2: sort out how much money that is. In nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 2: one US dollar was equal to about one point six
Speaker 2: Deutsche marks, so that would make it a little over
Speaker 2: five thousand dollars. But those are nineteen ninety three dollars,
Speaker 2: so I guess you could best understand the actual value
Speaker 2: of this money is around ten thousand US dollars today.
Speaker 2: Don't email me about math. And with cash in hand,
Speaker 2: they traveled from Germany to Ramsgate, that little seaside town
Speaker 2: in England, where members of the League of Saint George
Speaker 2: drove them to the airport, and, just like the mercenaries
Speaker 2: that would follow them two months later, they were given
Speaker 2: a name Monica hug It would pick them up from
Speaker 2: the airport when they got to South Africa. They arrived
Speaker 2: on tourist visas in January of nineteen ninety four, and
Speaker 2: Monica was there as promised to pick them up. She
Speaker 2: sorted other paperwork and work permits and their mercenary assignments,
Speaker 2: passing them off to Horst Cleans. They were assigned as
Speaker 2: armed guards at Radio Pretoria, an illegal radio station that
Speaker 2: broadcast African Internationalists propaganda, and they participated in military drills
Speaker 2: led by Willem Ratta, a former Rhodesian military officer. Everything
Speaker 2: seemed to be going according to plan until March fourteenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety four. By the time the next round of
Speaker 2: mercenaries arrived a few days later, there was no one
Speaker 2: there at the airport to greet them. Thomas Coonst was dead,
Speaker 2: and Alexander Nydelein, Horst Clean's, Stephen Ray's, and Monica Huggett
Speaker 2: had all been arrested. I really do hate to leave
Speaker 2: you hanging again. I promise I'm not dragging this story
Speaker 2: out on purpose to torment you. I was a little
Speaker 2: preoccupied this past week, and I'll be entirely otherwise occupied
Speaker 2: during the week you're hearing this. If you're listening to
Speaker 2: this on the day it comes out, I am almost
Speaker 2: certainly sitting in court right now. In October of last year,
Speaker 2: I did a couple of episodes about Virginia's burning objects law.
Speaker 2: There was a pair of episodes on Berry Black, the
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania clansman who challenged Virginia's cross burning statute and eventually
Speaker 2: won his case at the Supreme Court. And there was
Speaker 2: a third episode about a man who broke the law
Speaker 2: Virginia wrote to replace that original crossburning ban. In that episode,
Speaker 2: I talked a bit about the Nazi torch march that
Speaker 2: took place here in my hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia on
Speaker 2: August eleventh, twenty seventeen. The episode was about Tyler Diykes,
Speaker 2: but he was just one of about a dozen men
Speaker 2: who've been charged with burning an object with the intent
Speaker 2: to intimidate. That's the law that replaced the old crossburning statute. Well,
Speaker 2: this week, another one of those men is taking his
Speaker 2: case to trial. So I lost a little bit of
Speaker 2: time this week reviewing the facts so I can be
Speaker 2: prepared to sit through the trial. And I'm going to
Speaker 2: lose the entire next week. Sitting on a wooden bench
Speaker 2: taking notes by hand, I would love to promise you
Speaker 2: the final chapter of Monica Huggett's story is going to
Speaker 2: come next week, but if I'm being realistic, it'll be
Speaker 2: something else. I've been planning to do sort of a
Speaker 2: Q and A episode, so it might be that you
Speaker 2: can submit questions for that on the Weird Little Guy's subreddit.
Speaker 2: Just please don't send them to meet anywhere else, Like
Speaker 2: on any other social media platform, I'll just lose them.
Speaker 2: So if you have a question, please post it to
Speaker 2: the subreddit, or if you absolutely for some reason cannot
Speaker 2: do that, you can email it to me, but nowhere
Speaker 2: else please, And depending on how things go during the trial,
Speaker 2: I might have a minisode about the defendant, Basilio's pistols.
Speaker 2: If you're curious about pistolis, I'll include a link in
Speaker 2: the show notes to the pro publica article about his
Speaker 2: discharge from the Marines after he was revealed to be
Speaker 2: a member of Adam Woffen. So thank you for bearing
Speaker 2: with me as I tell the story of Monica Stone
Speaker 2: in these strange little chunks. I've really been enjoying how
Speaker 2: much digging this one has demanded of me. I just
Speaker 2: need a little more time to read some very weird
Speaker 2: racist prophecies before I'm ready to write the last chapter.
Speaker 2: Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool Zone Media
Speaker 2: and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded by me Ellie Conger.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Sophie Lettterman and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 2: show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The
Speaker 2: theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email
Speaker 2: me at Weird Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: I will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it.
Speaker 2: You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other
Speaker 2: listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit. If you have
Speaker 2: a burning question for me about the show, it's not
Speaker 2: too late to get over to the subreddit. Apply to
Speaker 2: a thread for an upcoming Q and a episode, but
Speaker 2: pass always. Just don't post something that's gonna make you
Speaker 2: one of my Weird Little Guys