They call it the Sarajevo Safari — a chilling criminal network that, across Europe in the 1990s, allegedly sold “war vacations” in the Balkans, where wealthy clients paid huge sums to shoot unarmed civilians for sport. The macabre story hit headlines yesterday after the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office opened an investigation following a report by Italian investigative writer Ennio Gavezzeni, who has spent years digging into the case.
According to Gavezzeni’s findings, the organisation arranged for groups of so-called “weekend snipers” to travel to Bosnia, in areas controlled by Bosnian Serbs, on short “war vacations,” paying to shoot civilians for sport. Long dismissed as rumour, the phenomenon appeared in 1990s media reports and later resurfaced in testimonies and documentaries. During the 2007 trial of Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladić, US volunteer firefighter John Jordan testified that he encountered “tourist snipers” among the attackers, describing outsiders armed and dressed like foreigners. The Hague tribunal documented over 11,000 civilian deaths during the 1992–1996 siege of Sarajevo.
Today, however, for the first time, a prosecutor’s office has opened a case, aiming to investigate the Italian snipers involved in these so-called “safaris.” The files remain classified. An investigative source with whom Brussels Signal spoke confirms that individuals from across Europe are believed to have been involved. If this is proven, the investigation could soon extend to other countries.
The complaint also details a grotesque “price list” for victims: Children cost more, men in uniform next, women after that, and the elderly “free.” The 2022 documentary Sarajevo Safari by Miran Zupanič includes anonymous accounts of foreigners — Americans, Canadians, Russians, and Europeans — paying to “play war.” Former Sarajevo mayor Benjamina Karić, who filed a criminal complaint in 2022 and later contacted Italian authorities via the embassy, praised the Milan prosecutors’ action. “An entire team has fought tirelessly to ensure this complaint isn’t forgotten,” she said. “We will not give up.”
Prosecutors are now probing aggravated multiple murder motivated by cruelty and abject reasons, investigating whether Italian citizens were complicit in one of the darkest episodes of the Bosnian War. The inquiry, however, cannot be understood by looking at Italy alone, it spans many other European countries, where the investigation could soon expand.
