Alessandro Saša Ota was born in Trieste on July 15th 1957 into a Slavic family. As a boy he attended scientific high school and took a great interest in music which he shared with his brother. His youthful passion for photographic images accompanied him throughout his life. Photography and filming became his profession when, in 1979, he joined the state broadcaster Rai in its regional headquarters in Friuli Venezia Giulia. Saša also outside of his work looked at the real world with a sharp spirit of observation and documented it with great sensitivity. With a group of friends he set up the “Fotoclub 80” and popular traditions become one of his favourite subjects. He also participated in the making of two films. Around 1987 he met Milenka Rustia, who in 1990 became his wife and in the same year his son Milan was born.
Saša spoke Slovenian and Serbo-Croatian and so also for that he was the ideal reporter to describe with images what was happening in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina in 1990 when Yugoslavia began to break up. Among other things, in May 1993 he was the only videographer to record Milosevic’s declaration when he announced Serbian denial of the international community’s peace proposal. In January 1994 he completed his last mission in Mostar with the journalist Marco Luchetta and the technician Dario D’Angelo. In east Mostar, he is photographing the sad eyes of Zlatko, one of the children in the refuge which the crew had managed to enter when there is an explosion that kills them. Zlatkos survives
(Update by Grazia Pia Attolini, 3 May 2020)
Alessandro Saša Ota and his colleagues were victims of one of the most intense daily bombings to which East Mostar was subjected. This is the most plausible explanation of their death. Following the attack, an investigation was opened and immediately closed.
The presence of Italian journalists and media workers in East Mostar was known, their having passed several checkpoints to reach Mostar, but the investigations did not reveal precise responsibilities regarding the intentionality of their killing by the Bosnian-Croatian forces.
