Wealthy foreigners ‘paid for weekend safaris to kill civilians’ during siege of Sarajevo
The battle, which killed more than 11,500 people, was the longest battle in modern European history and ended World War II. It left behind 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 warlord Radovan Karadzic.
Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic (left) and military commander Ratko Mladic.Credit: access point
Prosecutors in Milan are trying to identify Italians allegedly involved in the killings and may file charges of “aggravated voluntary murder 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 resurfaced thanks to the official lawsuit filed “against unknown persons” 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 murders 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,” Gavazzeni said.
Bosnian civilians flee from sniper fire on the streets of Sarajevo.Credit: Sygma via Getty Images
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 alleged “weekend snipers” from a captured Serbian soldier.
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 the “weekend snipers” was reportedly confirmed at the time by the Italian military intelligence agency SISMI.
‘We didn’t notice strange strangers coming’
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 didn’t know about it,” he told his correspondent in London. Daily Telegram.
“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.
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“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 documented case of a foreigner shooting at civilians from the hills surrounding Sarajevo.
Russian nationalist Eduard Limonov 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.
A controversial documentary Sarajevo SafariThe film made by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic in 2022 also made similar claims about foreigners going 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 neighbourhood of Sarajevo] In the film, a former intelligence officer said: “I saw how, in exchange for a certain amount of money, foreigners broke in to shoot at the surrounded citizens of Sarajevo.”
Zupanic told news website Balkan Insight that he had a hard time believing the “human safari” claims when he first heard them.
“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 entity which makes up half of Bosnia-Herzegovina]army and the Serbian victims of the war”.
Telegraph, London
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