Sarajevo & Bosnia, 1992–1995

Transmissions were made by satellite telephone, since the ground telephone lines were not working.

In July 1992, however, as ERT's correspondent, he boarded the C-130 transport aircraft carrying humanitarian aid into Sarajevo, and so became the first Greek journalist to enter the Bosnian capital while it was under siege by the Bosnian Serbs.

At the (shelled) Holiday Inn, where all the foreign war correspondents had put up, he had the chance to meet veterans of the war in Vietnam — the Briton Martin Bell and the American Peter Arnett — from whom he drew valuable experience, and also war correspondents of his own generation such as Christiane Amanpour.

The crew of the military C-130 transport had orders, on its return, to carry to Athens the wife and daughter of the Panathinaikos coach Ivica Osim, who were trapped in the besieged city.

This proved practically impossible, since the C-130 took off almost immediately after the humanitarian aid was unloaded, because Sarajevo airport was under relentless bombardment.

And so Argyris Dinopoulos, who stayed behind in Sarajevo to cover the war, became from then on the link between Ivica Osim — with whom he formed a personal friendship — and his family.

From July 1992 until the end of the siege of Sarajevo in 1995, Argyris Dinopoulos made continuous reporting assignments to the Bosnian capital.

In 1993 he published the book «Αυτό είναι το Σαράγιεβο;» — “Is This Sarajevo?”, with a preface by Ivica Osim — a chronicle of the siege and a record of life inside Sarajevo, with the testimony of its inhabitants and the disclosure of shattering events and scenes from the siege.

At that time, in the summer of 1993, it was the first book written anywhere in the world about the siege of Sarajevo, and for that reason it was translated into English at once.

Throughout the war in Bosnia (1992-1995) Argyris Dinopoulos, as correspondent for ERT, for SKAI 100.4 FM, for SKAI TV and — from 1994 — for Antenna, covered events and armed clashes across the whole of Bosnia, and not only the besieged capital.

He reported from Banja Luka, from Petrinja, from Srebrenica, from Foča, from Goražde and of course from Grbavica — the district of Sarajevo under Serb control — and from Pale, the seat of the Bosnian Serb leadership.

Alongside the armed clashes he recorded the peace efforts: first those of David Owen and Cyrus Vance, which failed, and then that of Richard Holbrooke, which led to the Dayton agreement.