The Milan Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation into a chilling case that brings to mind the famous Snipers’ Street in Sarajevo, a city besieged by Bosnian Serb militias from 1992 to 1996 during the Bosnian War. From the hills, they opened fire on passers-by who had no choice but to walk down that street and risk being shot. It is estimated that more than 11,000 civilians were killed in this way. The premise of this investigation, revealed by the Italian media and investigating an alleged crime of manslaughter with aggravated cruelty and vile motives, is that there were Italians who paid money to go to Sarajevo for the weekend and were able to shoot people, as in a stalking.
Ordinary citizens, close to far-right circles and fond of weapons, hired this service as a human safari in the besieged city. According to the complaint, they were on a flight from Trieste to Belgrade belonging to the Serbian company Aviogenex, which was operating at the time from the Italian airport. To be snipers on the weekend, they paid the equivalent of 80,000 to 100,000 euros, according to the first hypotheses of the investigation. For shooting children they paid more. In the information that emerged, there is talk of a Milanese businessman who owns a private cosmetic clinic, and is a citizen of Turin and Trieste.
The complaint, documented in 17 pages, came from the writer and journalist Ezio Gavazzini, with the support of the famous former judge Guido Salvini and the former mayor of Sarajevo from 2021 to 2024, Benjamina Caric, who was collecting information about something that had been rumored for years and crystallized in 2023 in Sarajevo SafariMe, a documentary by Slovenian Miran Zupanic. This film collected testimonies and provided evidence about the possibility that foreign millionaires paid money to travel to the Bosnian city so they could shoot people themselves.
Gavazzini told the newspaper on Tuesday that the Bosnian prosecutor’s office had closed the investigation because of the difficulty of investigating the case in a country still deeply divided and torn by war. Republic. Regarding Serbian justice, he emphasizes that for the courts of this country this issue is an “urban legend”. That’s why he tried to open the case in Italy. He emphasizes: “We are talking about people with money, good reputations and businessmen who paid during the siege of Sarajevo to be able to kill unarmed civilians. They left Trieste in pursuit and then returned and continued their usual lives, respectable in the eyes of everyone.”
Prosecutor Alessandro Gobis has a list of several people who can contribute to his testimony and will be called to testify. According to the writer, the number of these bloodthirsty tourists may reach one hundred. “I hope they can locate at least one or two, maybe ten,” he says.
Among the witnesses, says Gavazzini, is a Bosnian intelligence agent with the initials ES, who was aware of the events and confirms that Italian intelligence, which had staff in Sarajevo, had information about them in 1993 and there would be secret files on the matter. He confirmed: “He told me that Bosnian intelligence had warned of the presence of at least five Italians, who were in the hills surrounding Sarajevo, shooting at civilians.”
He also cites a Slovenian intelligence official, some victims, and an injured firefighter who, during the trial of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague, spoke of “tourist shooters” wearing different clothes and weapons that attracted the attention of Serbian soldiers.
The Bosnian Consul in Milan, Dag Demirkic, guaranteed “full cooperation” from his country’s government. He added: “We are eager to discover the truth about such a cruel matter and close accounts with the past. I know some information that I will contribute to the investigation.”
In the past, photos of Russian writer Eduard Limonov in the hills of Sarajevo, with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić, were also well known and highly controversial. They showed him how snipers shot people, so he put himself in front of the machine gun and fired some shots.
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