Italian probes claim tourists paid to shoot civilians in Bosnian War

The Public Prosecutor’s office in Milan has opened an investigation that Italian citizens traveled to Bosnia on “Sniper safaris” during the war in the early 1990s.

Italians and others are said to have paid large sums to shoot civilians risking their lives to cross the city’s main boulevard.

The complaint in Milan was filed by the journalist and novelist Ezio Gavazzeni, who described a “manhunt” of “rich people” from a wealth of weapons that “paid for the unstoppable areas of Sarajevo.

Different rates are charged for killing men, women or children, according to some reports.

More than 11,000 people died in the brutal four-year siege of Sareejevo.

Yugoslavia was torn apart by war and the town was surrounded by SERB forces and subjected to constant shelling and sniper fire.

Similar allegations about “human hunters” from abroad have been made for many years, but the evidence gathered by a military intelligence officer in Gavazzeni, which includes the Italian mentoring of the military in Bosnia, which includes the Italian terrorist promoter in Italnia, which includes the Italian mentoring of the military in Bosnia, which includes the Italian mentoring of the military in Bosnia, which includes the Italian mentoring in military Italy.

The payoff is murder.

The Bosnian official openly revealed that his colleagues in Bosnia found out about the so-called safaris in late 1993 and then passed the information to Sismi Militar in Italy in early 1994.

The answer from Sismi comes a few months later. They know that “safari” tourists fly from the northern border of the city of Trieste and then travel to the hills above Sarajevo.

“We have stopped it and there won’t be any more safaris,” the official said. Within two to three months the journeys stopped.

Ezio Gavazzeni, who usually writes about terrorism and the Mafia, first read about the sniper’s trips to Sarajevo three decades after Corriere Sera reported the story, but without solid evidence.

He returned to the subject after seeing “Sarajevo Safari”, a documentary film from 2022 by the Slovenian Director Miran Zupanic who came from many countries, including the US and Russia as well as Italy.

Gavazzeni began to dig further and in February prosecutors with his findings, said to amount to a 17-page file including a report by former Sarajevo Mayor Benjamina Karic.

An investigation into Bosnia itself appeared shocking.

Speaking to Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Gavazzeni said “many” were involved in the practice, with Italians having “a lot of money” to do so, up to €100,000 (£88,000) in today’s terms.

In 1992, the late Russian nationalist writer and politician Eduard Limonov was shot several rounds in Sarajevo from a heavy machine gun.

He was given a tour of the positions on the side of the Bosnian Serb Radovan Karadzic, who was later convicted by an international tribunal in The Hague.

However, tourism did not pay his war. There he was an admirer of Karadzic, who told the so-called Butcher of Bosnia: “We Russians must choose from you.”

The fact that opened a case that was first reported in July when Il Giornale website wrote that Italians pass through checkpoints when they go on a humanitarian mission.

After a week of shooting in the war zone, they return to their normal lives.

Gavazzeni described their actions as “indifference to evil”.

Prosecutors and police said they have identified a list of witnesses as they try to establish who may have been involved.