Jordi Pujol Puente was born in Barcelona 1967, where he studied Information Sciences at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Before finishing his degree, with three pending subjects, he began working as a freelancer for the newspaper Avui . He always dreamed of becoming a war photographer. On his first assignment as a photojournalist he came to Sarajevo thanks to his collaboration with Associated Press (AP). He told his older and more experienced colleague Santiago Lyon, that he had always wanted to become a photographer. “I had him under my wing,” recalls Lyon. Jordi’s amazing photographs went around the world.
Jordi’s Avui colleague and a friend Eric Hauck remembers when they came to Sarajevo and the way two of them met, “We had landed in Belgrade from Barcelona at the end of April, with the intention of arriving in the Jerusalem of Europe to witness what the harsh reality denied us with a rain of mortars as we set foot in the terminal: War will never reach Sarajevo! We grabbed clothes for only three days, thinking we would return to Belgrade to prepare for a longer mission with more time. For me it was the fourth front-line experience, in the Balkans and in the Middle East. For Jordi, touching heaven, like when a football player steps on the Theatre of Dreams in Manchester. We had both met in the bar of the Faculty of Journalism at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He was about to graduate. We connected right away. He was one of the few classmates that understood why, after the Christmas holidays, I showed photos of lives cut short by the war and not those of a skiing trip in the Pyrenees, like most classmates. And we agreed: journalism is not a career, it is a job, which is learned in the best university: on the streets, in the trenches, in the houses of the victims, in the offices of the butchers, in the press briefings of the hypocrites.”
Jordi, like no one in the ‘tribe’, perhaps because he had no time to hate the darkest side of our job, was an example of what maestro Ryszard Kapuściński had in mind when he stated that ‘bad people cannot be good journalists’. As a photo-reporter he did not miss the first opportunity to show that, amid the bombs and gunfire, the mixture of the sour smell of blood and unleavened bread, the toasting of a last ‘Drina’ cigarette and a coffee of humanitarian ration, his photos had to show the soul of those looks that crossed his rudimentary lenses. ‘The bullfighter’, ‘el torero’ – as Sarajevo’s friends soon began to call him because of his long hair gathered in a tail, waited for the main characters of his negs to look him in the eye before pressing the shutter. As if he hoped to be a part of their story.
On the morning of May 17, one of the quietest days of the siege, the whole team decides to go out to cover the celebration of the first anti-war demonstration, for Peace. The night before we had agreed to start the arrangements to leave Sarajevo for a while because, psychologically, we were exhausted. Perhaps it would be a good time, now that the so-called UN Protection Forces (UNPROFOR), commanded by Generals Satish Nambiar and Lewis MacKenzie, and excused by diplomat Fred Eckhardt, were retreating to Zagreb and Belgrade. We would take advantage of the ceasefire. On Sarajevo radio, they played ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’ by Guns N’Roses.
“Following the protocol, at 13:00, the group of photographers had to meet at the agreed meeting point in the city centre. Exhausted by the waiting time and realizing that the couple David – Jordi was not showing up, they started looking for them in the usual places, from the Presidency to the SOS Café. We heard only a single shell explosion that morning. After a few hours we were back at our base. Santi, shattered, informs us that David is in Kosevo’s hospital, badly injured, and Jordi’s body is in the morgue.”
Eric Hauck
The two had followed the Miljacka course to head uphill towards the front lines along the steep Soukbunar Street. Protected by the facades, they felt safe. The aggressor could not see them from the positions of the snipers or mortars. They pulled out the cameras, but they didn’t see it clearly. There was no need to take any risks. Suddenly, an explosion on the other side of the street surprises them. The shrapnel caught them squatting at the gate of No. 5. If the bomb, which passed over them, had not hit the angle of the building wall with the street, they would have been saved. But the explosion ejected all the lead in the opposite direction to the projectile’s trajectory. Bad luck for a day of peace. Jordi fell on top of David, long enough to realize he wouldn’t make it. Neighbours ran with blankets to pick them up and load them into the trunk of one of those Golfs that came out of the Vogosca factory. The first aid station was nearby, but doctors could do nothing to save him.
“Help us! Help us! … Help us!” My colleague Jordi Pujol and I lay bleeding on the ground. A rocket-propelled grenade had hit a house across the street and sprayed us with shrapnel. “I’m hit. Oh Christ, it’s my chest,” Jordi cried as I lay on top of him, too stunned to move away. I looked at his chest and saw two small wounds oozing blood. I kept thinking, “This doesn’t happen to us. We cover this.” I dragged myself into a doorway to escape any sniper fire. I’d seen video tape of Serbian snipers pumping bullets into a man as he lay on the ground after being knocked down by the initial blast of a mortar. I kept crying out for help as Jordi passed out on the pavement next to me.” David Brauchli
“The hospital couldn’t administer general anesthetic because it had no oxygen. All the oxygen was being held by the Serbs and, like everything else, was a bargaining chip. The only anesthetic was local, and it wasn’t strong. Even after numbing my legs with an injection into my spinal cord, I could feel the doctors operating me. The nurse had to tie my arms to the table. After the operation, I was put into a room with five other men. The man next to me had been shot by a sniper. The man across the room, a doctor, was rescuing a wounded man when his car was hit by a mortar shell. The doctors were professional and friendly, though they had been working four days without rest. How could they rest? they asked. Every day, more people came into the hospital. Morgues were full. I wanted to get out of Sarajevo, to free my bed for someone more seriously wounded and to get to a hospital outside the war zone to avoid infection. I had the choice. Most people don’t.” David Brauchli
“We wanted to let the world know that Sarajevo was on the map, that the city was suffering tragically.”
David Brauchli
For that noble mission Jordi Pujol Puente paid with his life, he was only 25 years old. Jordi was the first international journalist to be killed in the Bosnian War. As he joined the unbearable list of civilians killed during the siege of Sarajevo, the record of fallen foreign reporters (19) telling Europe’s latest shame was filled with its first name. He was also the third Spanish reporter to lose his life in the middle of a conflict, after Lucho Espinal Camps (1980, Bolivia) and Juantxu Rodríguez (1989, Panama). After Jordi, six more would fall: Luis Valtueña (1997, Rwanda), Miguel Gil (2000, Sierra Leone), Julio Fuentes (2001, Afghanistan), Julio Anguita Parrado (2003, Iraq), José Couso (2003, Iraq) and Ricardo Ortega (2004, Haiti).
“It took Santiago Lyon and Tony Smith almost four days to negotiate on their own the ceasefire from the aggressors that the UN was unable to obtain. Although our decision to evacuate was a victory desired by the criminals on the mountains, they let us beg for a safe route to leave Sarajevo, just behind the convoy of buses of the Embassy of the Children. Once Kosevo’s doctors assured us that David would be able to withstand an uncertain trip to Split, we set off to repatriate Jordi’s remains as well. Not to mention leaving the body behind, as President Izetbegovic had suggested. “We will return it to you when the war is over,” he said, not wanting to imagine that Sarajevo would write another page in history again as the scene of the longest siege ever suffered by a city: 1,425 days.” Eric Hauck
Eric continues, “With the last $ 1,000 left in my pocket, I bought the militia blue Zastava Yugo 101 from an Italian journalist to pick up Jordi’s body, which was kept in the rooms of the French Hospital. I had to rip off the co-pilot’s seat to accommodate the simple wooden coffin, like the ones we saw lined up in ‘Kovaci Cemetery’. In a convoy, we headed for Mount Igman, crossing the ‘Sniper Alley’ for the last time. May 21, in the morning, behind the wheel, a young man crying,
“Mama, put my guns in the ground
I can’t shoot them anymore
That long black cloud is comin’ down
I feel I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door…“
“They needed 12 hours to get to the coast. Tony Smith of the AP in a smashed-up car led us through the checkpoint saying, “We have one wounded and one dead.” The coffin was our passport. In the morning we woke in a hotel by the sea. Jordi’s father was coming to take his son’s body back to Barcelona. Eric wanted to buy clothes for the corpse. We thought about a suit but decided on a white T-shirt and denim trousers.” David Brauchli
“Three weeks before, we had only made one promise: to return together to Barcelona no matter what happened. And, unfortunately, what wasn’t supposed to happen, happened.” Eric Hauck
“I would like to return in a few years when everything is recovered. It’s 12.30 and in front of me is a crying man”. This was the last entry he wrote down in his travel diary. Jordi, like the Miljacka fisherman, was committed to life, trusted in recovery, and was convinced that he would return to Sarajevo.
JORDI PUJOL PUENTE was born 1967 in Barcelona, Spain.
He was killed while doing his job, on 17 May 1992 in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina.
Special thanks to Eric Hauck.
Music used: ‘Knocking On Heaven’s Door’
The song is permitted for non-commercial use under license:
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
© 2020 Sniper Alley. All rights reserved.
