“Tourist shooters” from Italy and other countries are suspected of having paid Serbian soldiers to shoot Sarajevo residents during the siege of the city in the 1990s. They shot people in the streets, including children, randomly, as if it were a video game or a safari.
The Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation into Italian citizens who allegedly paid to members of the army Bosnian Serb to travel to Sarajevo in order to kill civilians during the siege that devastated the city over four years in the 1990s.
Between 1992 and 1996, more than 10 thousand people they were killed in Sarajevoin Bosnia and Herzegovina, for bombings and sniper shootingin what became the longest siege in history modern, after the declaration of independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina from Yugoslavia, recalls the .
These snipers were probably the most feared element of life under siege: killed people in the streets, including childrenrandomly, as if it were a video game or a safari.
According to allegations now under investigation, groups of Italians and other nationalities, the so-called “sniper tourists”, will have participated in the massacres after pay large sums to soldiers of the army of the former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzicand other crimes against humanity.
Payments would guarantee transport to the hills surrounding Sarajevofrom where they shot at the civilian population for pure pleasure. Sarajevo is located in a basin surrounded by mountains, which made it easy to isolate and bomb.
The investigation, led by the prosecutor Alessandro Gobbiaims to identify the Italians involved, on suspicion of voluntary homicide aggravated by cruelty and vile motives.
The process originated in a formal complaint from Milanese writer Ezio Gavazzeniwhich gathered evidence about the allegations, and in a report sent to the Prosecutor’s Office by the former mayor of Sarajevo, Benjamina Karić.
Gavazzeni said he first learned about the alleged “sniper tourists” in the Italian press in the 1990s, but only began to investigate the case in depth after watching , a 2022 documentary by the Slovenian director Miran Zupanic.
In the film, a former Serbian soldier and a contractor claim that groups of Westerners They shot at civilians from the hills surrounding the city — a version of events vehemently denied by Serbian war veterans.
“Sarajevo Safari was the starting point“, stated Gavazzeni. “I started to exchange correspondence with the director and, from there, I expanded the investigation until I gathered enough material to present to the prosecutors in Milan”.
The writer stated that “many, many, many Italians” will have been involved, without indicating concrete numbers. “There were Germans, French, English…people from all Western countries paid large sums of money to go there and shoot civilians.”
According to Gavazzeni, “There were no political or religious motivations. They were rich people who went for fun and personal satisfaction. People who like guns, who maybe go to shooting ranges or go on safaris to Africa.”
The author also said that the Italian suspects met in the city of Trieste and then traveled to Belgrade, where they were accompanied by Bosnian Serb soldiers to the hills around Sarajevo. “There was a traffic of war tourists who went there to shoot people,” he said. “I call it indifference to evil.”
Gavazzeni diz ter identified some of the Italian suspectswho are expected to be questioned by prosecutors in the coming weeks.
Nicola Brigidathe lawyer who helped Gavazzeni prepare the case, stated: “The evidence gathered throughout a long investigation is well founded and can conduct a serious investigation to identify the culprits. There is also the report of the former mayor of Sarajevo”.
Among the deaths from sniper fire that most marked the conflict are those of Bošco Brkić and Admira Ismićthe couple portrayed in the 1994 Canadian documentary ““, killed by a sniper in 1993 while trying to cross a bridge.
The bodies they remained in no man’s land for several days between the Bosnian and Bosnian Serb positions. The photographs went around the world and became a symbol of arbitrariness and inhumanity of war.
Sarajevo’s main artery, the Boulevard Meša Selimovićbecame known as “Sniper Alley“, as it became extremely dangerous but was inevitable to get to the airport. Trams and buses were running with windows riddled with bullets and there were Sniper warnings everywhere.
