The Milan prosecutor’s office is already moving to try to find out more about the case Human safaris In Sarajevo, he was denounced in Italy by a writer and two distinguished lawyers with experience in very complex cases: he suspected that there were Italians who, during the Bosnian war, in the 1990s, had paid to travel to Sarajevo and were able to shoot people as snipers on weekends, from hills controlled by Bosnian Serb militias.
“We have presented documents full of evidence that deserve further investigation, which we have proposed to the judiciary. We firmly believe that they could lead to the identification of at least some of those responsible for these horrific crimes,” said lawyer Nicola Brigida in a telephone conversation with El Pais newspaper. He hopes that at some point the name of the person under investigation will be known, which will speed up the investigation.
This Wednesday, more details emerged from one of the main sources named in the complaint who will be one of the main witnesses, who will have to testify. He is a former Bosnian intelligence agent, and confirms that in 1993 they informed the Italian intelligence agency, then SISMI for short, of the existence of these organized flights.
“We found out that the safari departs from Trieste,” they answered us within two or three months. We have stopped them and there will be no more safaris,” the former agent stated in his testimony, according to Italian media reports. The route of these “war tourists” They left by plane from the Italian city bordering Slovenia, heading to Belgrade. From there, they went overland to Sarajevo.
And then they didn’t know any more about it. “We did not get the names of the fishermen or the regulators from SISMI, there must be a document SISMI certifies,” says this source. This means that there may be information about her preserved in the Italian state archives. This raises a crucial question: Why was no action taken against these people at that time? Specifically, one of the requests submitted to the Public Prosecutor’s Office is to verify the existence of a copy of those documents in Italy.
Brigida, who prefers not to provide further details about the case and let investigators work, is one of the lawyers who prepared the memorandum submitted to the prosecutor’s office in July, but became known this week. He did so in collaboration with former judge Guido Salvini, with material collected by journalist and writer Ezio Gavazzini, who investigated the matter for years and then sought his advice.
Brigida was involved in the judicial cases of missing Italians in Argentina and Chile (the trial of Admiral Massera and Generals Suarez Masson and Rivera, of the Argentine Junta; the trial of Oscar Alfonso Budlish Michaud, a senior official in the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile; and the victims of Operation Condor, among others), as well as in some serious attacks during the Years of Lead in Italy, such as the Bologna station attack in 1980. The other lawyer, Guido Salvini, is a judge A distinguished ex, now dedicated to the legal profession, who in the past investigated very dark conspiracies, such as the Italian neo-fascist terrorism or the secret Gladio military network.
Because of the cases she has had to deal with throughout her career, Brigida warns that it is difficult for her to be surprised: “This story kind of surprised me: after having dealt with things like death journeys, nothing surprises me anymore.” He points out that they are “a group of criminals” with a common image: “evil people, He may also have been ideologically motivated, had a passion for weapons, and would have shot at shooting ranges.
The two lawyers joined this difficult fight for the truth that began by submitting a 17-page document to the prosecutor’s office outlining a series of clues, indicators and potential witnesses for questioning. Topics that Prosecutor Alessandro Gobis, in charge of the case, can withdraw from now on.
“Our writings are clearly considered institutional and serious, and deserve to be verified and investigated. The Public Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation, which has been delegated to the Anti-Terrorism Section of the ROS (Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale, the Carabinieri unit specializing in terrorism),” explains the lawyer.
“He was world-famous,” says one writer.
This news caused an uproar in Italy, but the Italian writer and activist Adriano Sufri, who was in those years in Sarajevo and sent records to Italian newspapers, published an article on Wednesday in which he stated that the phenomenon was “universally known.” What’s more, he says the participants in this horrific activity were “eager and numerous.” In his article, he repeated phrases from his texts since he spoke about them, such as this sentence from May 17, 1995: “In Grbavica, where the snipers Chetniks (Serbian ultra-nationalist militia) The international participation in revenge is not hidden, in fact, Karadžić TV boasts of it, even when the target is children (a smaller target, a greater achievement for the shooter), there is also a Greek group and a notable case of a Japanese volunteer.” Sveri says that the latter explained to Bosnian Serb TV that he went to film in Sarajevo “because of disappointment in love.” Serb Vojislav Sesegil, who shot down a bystander in front of the cameras.
Brigida points out that the Italian Public Ministry also obtains records of various proceedings of the International Criminal Court in The Hague regarding crimes in the former Yugoslavia, held in recent decades. They refer to these as “war tourists” in some witness statements. Benjamina Caric, former mayor of Sarajevo between 2021 and 2024, also sent an official communication to the Milan court containing the information she knew.
Brigida explains that this case has not been decided, because it is a very serious crime punishable by life imprisonment, which is what is contemplated in Italy, it does not provide at all. He adds: “The Penal Code stipulates that even though the final stage of these crimes has been committed in another country, the jurisdiction of the Italian justice system remains preserved and can be tried in Italy. If this is not the case, impunity will be guaranteed for a citizen who travels abroad, commits horrific crimes and then takes refuge in Italy.”
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