Wealthy foreigners ‘paid for weekend safaris to kill civilians’ during siege of Sarajevo
Wealthy foreigners paid tens of thousands of pounds to become “weekend snipers” and shoot civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, according to allegations investigated by Italian authorities.
An investigation has been launched into allegations that gun enthusiasts and far-right extremists traveled to the war-torn city in the 1990s to kill terrified Bosnians “for fun” with sniper rifles.
foreigners, ItalyThe United States, Russia and elsewhere are accused of paying Serbian forces to participate in armed attacks during the Bosnian War.
Investigators say the men were allegedly motivated by sympathy for the Serbian cause, sheer bloodlust, or a combination of the two.
Serbia He denied the allegations.
But witnesses and Italian investigators claim there was even a price list for targeted killings; Foreigners would pay more to shoot boys and men with guns and uniforms.
According to newspaper La Repubblica, amateur snipers paid the modern-day equivalent of 80,000 to 100,000 euros to participate in this grisly “sport.”
Momo and Uzeir towers in Saravejo burned in 1992 – Getty Images
The Italians are said to have been rounded up in the northeastern border city of Trieste between 1992 and 1996 and transported to the hills surrounding Sarajevo. siege of the city.
The battle, which killed more than 11,500 people, became the longest battle in modern European history, surpassing Germany’s 872-day siege of Leningrad in World War II.
“War tourists” of various nationalities, including Americans and Russians, were allegedly allowed to open fire on civilians by Bosnian Serb militias under the command of the warlord Radovan Karadzic.
Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, April 1995 – Ranko Cukovic/Reuters
Prosecutors in Milan are trying to identify Italians allegedly involved in the killings who could file charges of “voluntary murder aggravated with cruel and degrading motives.”
They are assisted by officers from the Carabinieri police’s specialist unit, known as the Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale, which fights terrorism and organized crime.
Similar allegations have been made in the past, but have now resurfaced, thanks to an official lawsuit filed “against persons unknown” by the former mayor of Sarajevo, Benjamina Karic.
“A team of tireless people are fighting for this complaint to be heard,” he told Italy’s national news agency Ansa.
The case was taken on by Italian journalist and author Ezio Gavazzeni, with the support of two lawyers and a former judge.
“These killings had a price: children were more expensive, then men, women, preferably in uniform and armed, and finally the elderly, who could be killed for free,” Mr. Gavazzeni said.
Mr. Gavazzeni said he was horrified to think that rich, middle-class Italians would pay to go to Bosnia and kill people for sport.
“They left Trieste on a manhunt. Then they came home and continued their normal lives, they were respectable people in the eyes of those who knew them,” he said.
Amateur snipers reportedly paid the modern-day equivalent of between €80,000 and €100,000 to take part in shootings – Getty Images
Foreigners who came to Sarajevo to target civilians were “playing God and going unpunished,” he told La Repubblica newspaper.
It was reported that the murders were committed with the connivance of Serbian intelligence.
Prosecutors will examine testimony from a former Bosnian intelligence officer who collected information about the alleged snipers from a captured Serbian soldier over the weekend.
Former agent Edin Subasic said that during interrogation, the Serbian soldier said that the Italians had paid to shoot with sniper rifles on the front lines.
John Jordan, a former US marine, testified at the United Nations-led ad hoc international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2007 that “tourist attackers” went to Sarajevo to shoot at civilians for their own pleasure.
He said he saw a stranger “show up with a gun that looked more suited to wild boar hunting in the Black Forest than urban combat in the Balkans,” adding that the person used the gun like a “beginner.”
The existence of “weekend snipers” was reportedly confirmed at the time by the Italian intelligence agency SISMI.
Siege of Saravejo killed more than 11,500 people – Getty Images
Tim Judah, an experienced British expert on the Balkans, said he thought it was possible that foreigners had paid to shoot at Sarajevo residents, but said the numbers would not have been large.
“I spent a lot of time in the Pale, which was the headquarters of the Bosnian Serb forces from 1992 to 1995, and I had not heard of it,” he told The Telegraph.
“We didn’t notice the strange foreigners coming. There were also some Russians and Greeks, but they were fighting on the Serbian side as volunteer soldiers.
“I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. It’s possible that there are people willing to pay to do it. But I don’t think the numbers will be very large.”
There is a well-known, documented case of a foreigner shooting at civilians from the hills surrounding Sarajevo.
Eduard Limonov, a Russian nationalist, was filmed firing a machine gun into the besieged city in 1992.
He was accompanied by Karadzic, who was later found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity during the Bosnian war.
Limonov died in Moscow in 2020 at the age of 77.
The siege of the city between 1992 and 1996 killed more than 11,500 people and was the longest siege in modern European history – David Brauchli
Similar claims were made in the controversial documentary called “Sarajevo Safari”, shot by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic in 2022, that foreigners went on a “weekend war safari”.
An unnamed former American intelligence officer said he had seen tourists paying to shoot at civilians.
“I was in Grbavica (a neighborhood of Sarajevo) and saw how foreigners came here to shoot at surrounded Sarajevo citizens in exchange for a certain amount of money,” the former intelligence officer said in the film.
Mr Zupanic told news website Balkan Insight that he found it hard to believe when he first heard the claims about the “human safari”.
“My reaction was that such a thing was impossible; hunting people was a fairy tale, an urban legend. It absolutely disturbs me that there are people who pay to shoot other people. This knowledge is impossible to bear.”
The documentary received an angry response from Bosnian Serbs. Veljko Lazic, president of the veterans’ organisation, called this “an absolute and disgusting lie”.
He said the documentary was “an insult to the Republika Srpska (the ethnic Serb community that makes up half of Bosnia and Herzegovina), its army and the Serbian victims of the war.”
