‘Human safari’ tourists allegedly paid more to kill pregnant women
Topics: News, World News, Crime, True Crime
Madison Burgess
Featured Image Credit: Francoise De Mulder/Roger Viollet via Getty Images
Topics: News, World News, Crime, True Crime
More horrifying details are emerging surrounding the ‘human safari’ trips during the siege of Sarajevo, which allegedly saw wealthy tourists pay large sums of money to shoot civilians in the 1990s.
Between the years of 1992 and 1996, more than 10,000 people were killed in the Bosnian capital by snipers and shelling during a four-year siege, after Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia.
However, disturbing reports have circulated for years about how, during the conflict, the sinister so-called ‘Sarajevo safari’ was also going on.
Wealthy tourists and rich gun enthusiasts are accused of travelling to Sarajevo for 'sniper tourism,’ where they allegedly paid members of the Bosnian Serb army to kill civilians.
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Last year, journalist Ezio Gavazzeni compiled information about the alleged practice and handed it over to the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office, which opened an investigation.
Since then, others have come forward, including Croatian journalist Domagoj Margetic, who published a new book, Pay and Shoot, which cites documents handed over by Nedzad Ugljen, a Bosnian intelligence officer who was killed in 1996.
Allegedly, sniper tourists would pay 80,000 marks (£35,000) to shoot someone who was middle-aged, 95,000 marks (£42k) to shoot a young woman, and 110,000 marks (£49k) to shoot a pregnant woman.
It's also been claimed the tourists would pay more to shoot children.
As per The Times, Margetic wrote: “Ugljen also wrote the foreigners competed to see who could shoot the most beautiful women.”
Aleksandar Licanin, 63, who was a volunteer with a Bosnian Serb tank unit at the time, also spoke to the publication about what he witnessed, claiming that the sniper group included Britons, Italians, and Germans.
He told The Times: “I want the truth to come out and I was waiting for a real investigation to start.”
He added: “I am prepared to stand up and tell the Italian magistrates what I know.”
He alleges he first saw well-dressed foreigners taking up positions with snipers around 1993 or 1994.
“They wore expensive leather jackets, and I was told they were Italians, Germans and British,” he said, “They were helped to find targets, and shooting from the cemetery was a clear shot - you had everything.”
As reported by Al Jazeera, as part of the ongoing probe, in February, an 80-year-old former truck driver was put under investigation.
Reuters reported that he faces charges of several counts of premeditated murder, according to sources who spoke to the agency; however, no further details or updates have been issued.
Gavazzeni, who kicked off the investigation after compiling information, said he had first read reports about the alleged sniper tourists in the Italian press in the 1990s.
However, it was the 2022 documentary Sarajevo Safari, by Slovenian director Miran Zupanič, that prompted him to investigate further.
The Siege of Sarajevo begins. For almost four years, the 400,000 inhabitants of the city suffer from shelling and snipers, with many cut off from food, water, medicine and electricity.
Bosnian military intelligence officer Edin Subasic comes across testimony from a Serbian volunteer. He later tells El País the man spoke about seeing ‘five Italians who had hunting equipment and expensive weapons’ who described themselves as ‘hunters who paid Serbs in Sarajevo to shoot people in the city’.
The Siege of Sarajevo ends.
Former US Marine John Jordan testifies to the International Criminal Court about ‘tourist shooters’. He said: “I never saw one of these tourist shooters take a shot. I just saw them being handled and moved around known sniper positions.
"It was clearly obvious that the person being led by men who were familiar with the ground was completely unfamiliar with the ground, and his manner of dress and the weapons they carried led me to believe they were tourist shooters.”
Luca Leone writes in his book The B***ards of Sarajevo of European tourists paying at checkpoints managed by Serbian paramilitaries in Croatia and Bosnia to shoot civilians in Sarajevo.
The documentary Sarajevo Safari by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic further drags the murky details of the alleged human safaris into the public eye.
The film includes testimony from Subasic and an unnamed Slovenian source who worked for ‘an important American agency’. The latter claims in the film to have seen ‘how, for certain sums of money, strangers would come in to shoot at the surrounded citizens of Sarajevo’.
The public prosecutor's office in Milan opens an investigation into claims Italian citizens were involved in the ‘human safaris’, after journalist and author Ezio Gavazzeni filed a legal complaint.
Meanwhile, US congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna says she has opened her own investigation and vows: “If there are any Americans who have engaged in this, they deserve to be charged and prosecuted.”
An 80-year-old Italian truck driver allegedly becomes the first suspect investigated over the ‘human safaris’.