William Morgan
Officials in the US and Italy are opening major investigations into claims that 'sniper tourists' paid $90,000 to travel to shoot at civilians during the bloody Bosnian War in the early 1990s, and an intelligence officer has described their chilling motivation.
Grim details of the 'human safari' that allegedly took place during the three-year siege of Sarajevo have emerged this week, with fresh attention on the explosive 2022 documentary Sarajevo Safari, which details one of the lesser-known crimes of the conflict through interviews with highly placed officials on both sides of the war.
Edin Subasic, a Bosnian intelligence officer, explained how a Serbian captive had detailed foreigners entering the country by bus, being taken to an area a short drive from the city called Pale. From there they were allowed to approach Sarajevo and shoot their guns from vantage points at its captive populace.
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He claimed that the shooters came from the US, Canada, Russia, and Italy, entering through nearby countries. When asked what was motivating this dark tourism, Subasic described the chilling reason as 'people with such luxury in their lives, they wanted a challenge that only money could buy.'
Journalist Ezio Gavazzeni has separately documented these crimes and alleges that these 'very wealthy people' would pay $90,000 to shoot at civilians, with people of all ages falling victim to their 'manhunt,' during the longest siege in modern warfare.
“There were Germans, French, English … people from all Western countries who paid large sums of money to be taken there to shoot civilians,” Gavazzeni has alleged in a complaint now filed with prosecutors in Milan.
Echoing the Bosnian intelligence officer, the journalist added “There were no political or religious motivations. They were rich people who went there for fun and personal satisfaction. We are talking about people who love guns who perhaps go to shooting ranges or on safari in Africa."
An anonymous source in the Sarajevo Safari documentary lays out how these foreign snipers would have a gun and binoculars laid out for them by militants, turning the city into a firing range.
The same source claimed that, when one foreign tourist turned the gun towards a mother and child, he discovered that they were being charged extra to shoot kids.
Another witness to the alleged 'sniper tourists' of Sarajevo, city resident Mirsad Sijarić, also spoke on the documentary.
He said that the city's residents saw the most intense shooting on the weekends, with 'people from neighbouring areas' coming in by bus to take potshots at Sarajevo's residents.
"We call them weekend warriors," Sijarić said.