Wealthy foreigners 'paid for chance to shoot civilians in Sarajevo'

Wealthy foreign gun enthusiasts paid Bosnian Serb forces for the chance to shoot residents of Sarajevo during the siege of the city during the 1990s, according to claims being investigated by Italian magistrates.

The investigation was prompted by new evidence that “weekend snipers” paid handsomely to line the hills around Sarajevo and join in the Bosnian Serb siege, which killed more than 11,500 people between 1992 and 1996 during the Balkan Wars.

The investigation into the alleged “human safari” in Sarajevo has been opened after years of research by the Italian writer Ezio Gavazzeni, who said a key source was a former Bosnian intelligence officer.

“What I learnt is that Bosnian intelligence warned the local office of the Italian secret service … about the presence of at least five Italians who were taken to the hills above Sarajevo to shoot civilians,” he told the Italian daily La Repubblica.

Gavazzeni started investigating after watching the 2022 documentary Sarajevo Safari, by the Slovenian film-maker Miran Zupanic. The film quoted an unnamed American former spy saying that he had seen visitors paying to shoot civilians. Serbian veterans have denied the claims.

Although there are allegations that snipers arrived from around Europe, Gavazzeni focused on reports of Italians gathering in the Trieste before they were escorted to Sarajevo.

“One of the Italian snipers identified to SISMI [the Italian secret service] in 1993 was from Milan, and the owner of a private clinic specialising in cosmetic surgery,” he said. “We are talking about wealthy people, entrepreneurs with a reputation, who during the siege of Sarajevo paid to be able to kill helpless civilians.”

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After their trips to Sarajevo, he said, “they returned to their respectable lives”. He added that the snipers proved “the indifference of evil — becoming God and remaining unpunished”.

As Milan magistrates seek to identify the Italian snipers, Gavazzeni said he hoped to get the secret service documents about them. “I would really like to read them. I hope they haven’t vanished — it would be very serious.”

The Bosnian consul in Milan, Dag Dumrukcic, told La Repubblica that the Bosnian government would offer “total collaboration” to the magistrates. “We are impatient to discover the truth about such a cruel matter in order to close a chapter of history. I am in possession of certain information I will be sharing with the investigators,” he said.