Kathyrn Bolkovac – to be portrayed by Rachel Weiss in The Whistleblower – is interviewed on BBC Hard Talk (written interview also with The Guardian) about her role in reporting staff of the UN’s International Police Taskforce (IPTF) in Bosnia for involvement in sexual trafficking.
When I working at a certain supermarket in Edinburgh, there were a variety of misfit security guards. One was a recently immigrant from Mozambique, with a scar covering half his face and neck. There was said to be a wonderful story about how he came about it, but I never asked. Concerning Bolkovac’s accounts of recruiting criteria demanded of DynCorp, the contractor for the IPTF appear little different, plus her fairly unambiguous accusations that they attracted sexual predators.
Bolkovac’s first assignment was heading a UN programme entitled Effectively Addressing Violence Against Women in Sarajevo where it became more and more apparent to her than young women and pubescent girls were being brought in from across Eastern and Central Europe to fill sex-clubs in the area supposedly under the protection of the international community.
One statement by Bolkovac is that, immediately following a Military Police raid against Dyncorp-operated offices at Tuzla International Airport in May 2000 where sex-workers were discovered, an internal e-mail from a senior executive alerted staff with privileged information about the allegations and advice on collating alibis. After sending an e-mail of her own to non-Dyncorp senior UN personnel, she was demoted to a desk job but remain in contact with various humanitarian and aid organizations supplying her with updates.
One of those arrested at Tuzla, Kevin Warner confessed and implicated both Dyncorp staff and the chain-of-command in collaborations with a notorious Sarajevo pimp and bar-owner, ‘Debeli’ (Sebro-Croat for “fat boy”).
Although in April 2001, Bolkovac eventually was dismissed for falsifying time sheets – for which she has an unfair dismissal law-suit ongoing – she continued collating more information, until being warned by a former colleague that an attempt on her life was being plotted.
Soon after she fled Bosnia, the events were reported in the international media vindicating her and another DynCorp whistleblower, Ben Johnston. Despite this, however, Dyncorp continued to be awarded major UN and US security contracts, with allegations of similar sexual crimes as well as common violence or racketeering being reported on multi-continents.
One of the most recent was in 2009 of a teenage Afghan boy being hired to dance at a company event which was then filmed.
