Prosecutors in Milan have opened an investigation into Italian tourists who allegedly paid £70,000 to shoot innocent people in ‘human safari’ hunting trips to Sarajevo, with extra charged to kill children.
The wealthy foreign gun enthusiasts are accused of travelling to the city for ‘sniper tourism’ during its four-year siege in the 1990s by Serb-Bosnian militias amid the Bosnian War.
Between 1992 and 1996, more than 10,000 people were killed in Sarajevo by shelling and sniper fire in the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare.
The tourists, who are understood to have had ties to hard-Right circles, allegedly paid members of the Bosnian Serb army for weekend trips to the besieged city where they participated in the massacre of residents for pleasure.
According to the case, they flew from Trieste to Belgrade on the Serbian airline Aviogenex to be ‘weekend snipers’ and join in the bloody siege, reportedly paying between £70,000 and £88,000.
The killing of children cost more, El Pais reported.
The investigation originated from a 17-page legal complaint submitted by Milan-based writer and journalist Ezio Gavazzeni, with the support of former magistrate Guido Salvini and Benjamina Karic, mayor of Sarajevo from 2021 to 2024.
The allegations came to light in the 2022 documentary ‘Sarajevo Safari’ by Slovenian filmmaker Miran Zupanic, who gathered testimonies about the possibility of wealthy Italians and other nationalities paying to travel to Sarajevo to shoot at residents.