Renate Flottau

Renate Flottau (born December 29, 1944 ) is a German journalist .

Life

Renate Flottau volunteered at the Fränkische Landeszeitung and then worked for various newspapers and magazines. In 1976 she switched to television and became HR editor for the Hessenschau program .

In the early 1980s she moved to Belgrade with her husband Heiko Flottau , also a journalist . The couple separated in 1984, and while her husband moved on to Cairo as a correspondent, Flottau stayed in Belgrade. She initially worked as a Yugoslavia correspondent for ZDF , then from 1986 as a Balkan correspondent for the news magazine Der Spiegel .

Flottau was one of the few Western journalists to meet the Saudi multimillionaire Osama bin Laden . In 1993, the year of the war, Bosnian Muslims had issued bin Laden with a passport; he was relatively unknown at the time and raved about the Bosnian struggle for freedom. He had a passport of the new state of Bosnia-Herzegovina, issued by the embassy in Vienna, and boasted that he smuggled international fighters into the crisis area - the Spiegel reported about the encounter eight years late. What Der Spiegel did not report, but the Belgrade newspaper Politika after a conversation with Flottau: The 1993/94 meetings with Bin Laden took place in Sarajevo in the presidential palace of President Alija Izetbegović . The 3rd Corps of the Bosnian Muslim Army called " Mujahid " consisted of 5,000 Arab warriors who were trained in Sudan , but the "Mujahedin" received military support from the USA, and the money came from Austria. Bin Laden coordinated the US attacks.

Flottau now lives in Belgrade.

Prizes and awards

• 1998 Rudolf Vogel Medal of the Southeastern Europe Society in recognition of the contribution to broadening knowledge of Southeastern Europe
• 1999 Third prize of the Prix ​​Bayeux-Calvados des Correspondants de Guerre for war correspondents for their work With Rugova, the hostage of Milosevic, in Pristina , Der Spiegel
• 2000 Egon Erwin Kisch Prize for the Kosovo Diary , Der Spiegel
• 2001 Second prize for the freedom and future of the media for her journalistic work in the Balkans conflict

Web links

• Bonjour Balkan, Flottau's personal blog

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bin Laden secret in Austria , May 14, 2011.
2. ↑ Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft, prizes and awards, online under Archived Copy ( Memento of the original from October 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Prix ​​Bayeux Calvados for War Correspondents, 1999 Trophies , online under Archived Copy ( Memento of the original from February 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ Egon Erwin Kisch Prize: An overview of all winners , online at http://www.stern.de/unterhaltung/buecher/509895.html
5. ↑ Medienstiftung der Sparkasse Leipzig, Prize Winner 2001: Portrait Renate Flottau , from September 27, 2001, online under Archived Copy ( Memento of the original from December 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.