Italy’s public prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into claims that Italians travelled on weekend “sniper safaris” to Sarajevo to shoot at citizens during the Bosnian-Serb army’s siege on the city that killed more than 11,000 people between 1992 and 1996.
The alleged “safaris” – a grotesque reference to expeditions to hunt or observe wild animals – took place as the Bosnian-Serb force besieged the city in what became the longest siege on a city in modern European history.
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Milan’s investigation, headed by prosecutor Alessandro Gobbis, was launched after journalist and novelist Ezio Gavazzeni, in collaboration with lawyers Nicola Brigida and former judge Guido Salvini, filed a legal complaint of “murder aggravated by cruelty and despicable motives” against alleged groups of Italians travelling to Sarajevo to join the trips.
According to Italian media, investigators hope to track down people who participated in the alleged “safaris”, in addition to five men who have already been identified in Gacazzeni’s suit.
Gavazzeni, who has turned all his evidence over to prosecutors, told the Italian news outlet La Repubblica on Tuesday that his suit “exposes a part of society that hides its truth under the carpet”.
“Because we’re talking about wealthy people with reputations, entrepreneurs, who during the siege of Sarajevo paid to be able to kill defenceless civilians,” he added.
Here’s what we know about the alleged “sniper safaris”.
How did sniper safaris work?
Between 1992 and 1996, Italian citizens and others who were mainly gun enthusiasts would gather in Trieste, northwestern Italy, on the border with former Yugoslavia on Fridays for a weekend of “hunting”. It remains unclear who arranged the trips for the alleged groups to take.
Participants would then allegedly be flown by the Yugoslav/Serbian Aviogenex airline to the hills surrounding Sarajevo, where they would pay Bosnian-Serb militias loyal to President Radovan Karadzic, who was later convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2016 and sentenced to life in prison after a 2019 appeal, to shoot at citizens.
According to La Repubblica, these “tourists” paid up to 100,000 euros ($116,000), adjusted for current inflation rates and currency change, as the euro was not introduced until 1999, to join trips to Sarajevo to commit the killings.
Gavazzeni claims that participants would be given a price list for the type of kill that foreigners would pay for who they wanted to target, with children costing the most, then men, women and elderly people, who could be killed free of charge.
“[A participant] left Trieste for the manhunt. And then he returned and continued his life as usual, respectable in everyone’s eyes,” Gavazzeni said.
“People with a passion for weapons, to indulge, who prefer to go to bed with a rifle, with money at their disposal and the right contacts of facilitators between Italy and Serbia. It’s the indifference of evil: becoming God and remaining unpunished,” he added.
Gavazzeni’s 17-page filing includes the testimony of Edin Subasic, a Bosnian military intelligence officer who claims he and some colleagues informed Italy’s military intelligence agency, Sismi, about reports of Italians who would fly from Trieste to Sarajevo to take part in early 1994. In his testimony, he stated that the Italian intelligence service told him it had “put a stop” to the trips a few months later.
The Sismi report said it had discovered the departure points in Trieste and had interrupted the operation.
Another witness cited in the filing gave Gavazzeni details of three men who are now being investigated, who come from Turin, Milan and Trieste. According to a Sismi report, cited in the lawsuit, the man from Milan who took part in the shootings in 1993 was the owner of a private plastic surgery clinic.
Former Sarajevo mayor Benjamina Karic also sent a case file to the Milan Prosecutor’s Office on these “rich foreigners engaged in inhumane activities”, Italian news agency, ANSA, reported.
Who knew about these ‘safaris’?
Serbia has denied any involvement in the killings, but investigators believe that Serbian intelligence services were aware of the tourist trips.
According to testimony from Subasic, the Bosnian military intelligence officer who is expected to be one of the first people summoned by the prosecutor’s office, the way that the trips were organised with the airline carrier pointed to the Serbian State Security Service being “behind it all”, ANSA reported.
While Sismi was informed about the first trip, the official told La Repubblica it was never discussed again between the Bosnian and Italian spy agencies.
The Bosnian consul in Milan, Dag Dumrukcic, told La Repubblica on Tuesday that his government was working in “full cooperation in the investigation”.
“We are eager to uncover the truth of such a cruel affair and settle accounts with the past. I have some information that I will pass on to the investigators,” Dumruckic added.
What do survivors of Sarajevo say?
Dzemil Hodzic, 42, who grew up in Sarajevo in the 1990s and was nine when the siege began, is the founder of the Sniper Alley Photo project, which archives photographs taken during the siege. He told Al Jazeera that the findings came as no surprise to him, as the weekends were always “especially dangerous” in Sarajevo at the time.
Hodzic said there was always “information circulating about the people from outside coming to shoot at us”.
“It is a well-known fact, but, unfortunately, it means nothing when the murderers and snipers who were shooting at us for four years are at large and we see that our Bosnian prosecutor’s office is doing nothing about it. I just hope that this case from Italy won’t disappear from our media space and that we will actually have some positive results,” he said.
“My brother was killed by a Serb sniper while he was playing tennis in our neighbourhood. We will never know if it was one of those who paid to do so,” he added.
Did people from other countries also participate?
It is believed that citizens of multiple countries took part. In 2022, Bosnian film director Miran Zupanic’s documentary, Sarajevo Safari, investigated wealthy foreigners who had participated, including some from the United States and Russia.
One notable example was Russian nationalist writer and politician Eduard Limonov, who was filmed during a documentary on the Bosnian war by Pawel Pawlikowski in 1992, shooting a machinegun towards the city of Sarajevo while personally accompanied by Karadzic.
Moreover, in 2007, former US Marine John Jordan testified to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that “tourist shooters” had come to Sarajevo.
“It was clearly obvious that the person being led by men who were familiar with the ground was completely unfamiliar with the ground, and his manner of dress and the weapons they carried led me to believe they were tourist shooters,” Jordan told the court.
