ANGEL OF MOSTAR

Her bravery rescuing children from the Bosnian war earned Sally Becker the nickname ‘the Angel of Mostar’. Thirty years on, she is still saving lives

by ANNA PUKAS

Sally Becker was living in Spain when she caught a news bulletin from Sarajevo in Bosnia in 1993. The screen showed a woman trying to cross a road that was a prime target for snipers. Turning her face to the cameras, the woman cried out, ‘Why is no one helping us?’

It touched a deep chord. ‘It felt like she was talking directly to me. That’s how the Holocaust happened,’ says Sally. ‘Because no one helped.’ On the spot, she volunteered to join a convoy taking much-needed aid to Mostar, the main city in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina. What was meant to be a three-week trip turned into a life’s mission: to bring aid to places that had been stripped of everything and to take injured and ill children to safety.

Bosnia and Herzegovina was awash with UN peacekeepers and aid agencies, yet they often seemed hamstrung by bureaucracy. So, relying solely on her relentless determination and her refusal to take no for an answer Sally, who was then in her early thirties, managed to organise the first medical evacuation of children, without UN help. Her face and her spiky hair became a familiar sight on the news, where she was dubbed the Angel of Mostar – and the UN did not like it. She was repeatedly discredited and even accused of spying, while the headline writers renamed her the ‘Fallen Angel’.