Milos Stankovic
Milosh Radomir Vladimir Stankovic is a former British Army officer and author of the Bosnian war memoire Trusted Mole.
Early years
Stankovic was born in Southern Rhodesia. His father, a naturalised British, was a Royalist Yugoslav during World War II. His mother was British and served with the Eighth Army at the battle of El Alamein in Egypt 1942–43, Italy 1944 and in Yugoslavia in 1945. The family returned to London from Rhodesia in 1963. Stankovic was educated at Plymouth College in Devon, England, where he studied classics and was head of school and head of the Combined Cadet Force.Military service
He joined the Parachute Regiment in 1981, went to Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1982 and was sent to university by the Army to study Russian at Manchester University and at the Minsk State Pedagogical Institute for Foreign Languages in the Soviet Union. He completed the Standard Graduate Course at Sandhurst in 1986 and subsequently served with the British Army in Belize, Northern Ireland and Southern Africa, and with the United Nations forces in Kuwait, Iraq and Bosnia. A fluent speaker of Serbo-Croatian and Russian, he specialised in psychological operations and post-Cold War arms control. He retired from the British Army in 2000 with the rank of major.Bosnian War
Operating primarily as a liaison officer under the pseudonym 'Mike Stanley', he was the longest-serving British soldier with the United Nations Protection Force during the 1992–95 Bosnian War. In the latter part of his service, he worked directly for General Sir Michael Rose and General Sir Rupert Smith, successive commanders of the United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia in 1994 and 1995. His functions mainly involved mediating, negotiating and troubleshooting ceasefires, hostage releases, and the 1995 Cessation of Hostilities Agreement with Bosnian Serb political and military leaders. Upon his return from Bosnia, Stankovic was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire for his mediation work.Spy scandal
In October 1997, while at the Joint Services Command and Staff Course, Stankovic was arrested by the Ministry of Defence Police on suspicion of breaches under Section 2b of the Official Secrets Act 1911. Although he was on police bail for over a year, during which time the MOD Police interviewed several hundred witnesses, no evidence of any wrongdoing was found with which to charge him. In April 1999 the Crown Prosecution Service concluded that there would be no further action against him for lack of evidence. Nonetheless, for a subsequent year, he was investigated by the Royal Military Police's Special Investigations Branch to determine whether violations to the Military Services had been made. In March 2000, the Army concluded that no violations had been found. Meanwhile, Stankovic had resigned from the Army in order to pursue his case against the Ministry of Defence in the Civil Courts. The Army Board reflected the lack of substance of the allegations and the failure of two investigations to find any evidence of wrongdoing in an unusual letter to Major Stankovic that is not normally written to officers retiring from the Services:Litigation
In October 2007, ten years after his arrest, Stankovic's case against the Ministry of Defence Police finally came to trial in the Royal Courts of Justice. There were only three torts in law upon which he could rest his claim: Unlawful arrest; trespass to property; and malfeasance in public office – a tort that had been heard only ten times previously in civil courts and had failed on seven of those occasions. Although the trial judge, Justice Saunders, found that the MOD Police had not abused their power during investigation and held reasonable grounds for suspicion leading to Stankovic's subsequent arrest, he did find that the trespass of Stankovic's property had been inordinate. Furthermore, the trial process revealed additional hitherto unseen disclosure, which finally named Stankovic's original accuser – a former British Army officer. In clearing Stankovic's name, The Honourable Mr Justice Saunders summed up as follows on 9 November 2007:Mr Justice Saunders awarded £5,000 for the MOD Police "seizing and removing items outside the terms of a search warrant", but threw out the majority of Stankovic's case and made him liable for all costs.
Writing
On 14 April 2000, Stankovic published Trusted Mole, his own account of his experiences as a liaison officer, mediator and negotiator in the Bosnian War.Recent years
Having spent two and a half years in bail custody, Stankovic supports the Justice Delayed Justice Denied campaign to restrict police bail durations.Since leaving the British Army, Stankovic has worked as a risk management consultant and in business intelligence in Russia. He has worked with CBS and BBC on protection measures for reporters in Iraq.