Sniper Tourism on Sarajevo: Thirty
Years Later
By Laura Savoini,
Transitions on Line
June 28, 2026
Italian journalist Ezio Gavazzeni
talks to Transitions about his recent investigation, which has prompted
the courts to take action.
The rumors
and allegations swirling around cases of so-called sniper tourists during the
Bosnian War may finally have some clarity soon – more than three decades after
the end of the conflict. A documentary and a book released earlier this year
have led the Italian authorities to launch an investigation of the alleged role
of Italian citizens in shootings that took place in Sarajevo. Other countries
are also springing into action.
In recent
months, Milan prosecutors have identified an 80-year-old Italian man, mainly
thanks to the testimony of the inhabitants of his town. They have yet to
indicate whether he was one of the snipers or helped with the logistics for
clients, but the man is currently facing charges of premeditated murder. The
suspect was interrogated in Milan and has been described by the Italian press as
the owner of several firearms and nostalgic for the fascist era. Earlier this
month, The Times of London also reported that an Italian aristocrat is also
suspected of being one of those who had paid to take part in the so-called human
safaris.
Austrian
authorities have also confirmed that an investigation had been launched into the
role of one of the country’s citizens but details have not been released.
Magistrates from Italy, Austria, France, Switzerland, and Belgium are scheduled
to meet on 29 June at the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation
(Eurojust) in The Hague. The summit is designed to coordinate their respective,
ongoing investigations.
While the
offenses and their status as violations of international law provide strong
grounds for Italy and others to investigate and prosecute, significant
challenges still remain in gathering evidence after such a long passage of time,
accessing witnesses, and cross-border cooperation.
War Tourism
At the heart
of the recent movement on these cold cases is Italian journalist and novelist
Ezio Gavazzeni. He filed a criminal complaint last year, handing over to the
authorities three years of research, which he later published as a book, Weekend
Snipers, this past spring.
Talk of
wealthy, thrill-seeking foreigners journeying to Bosnia to kill innocent
civilians have circulated for years. Back in the 1990s, Corriere della Sera,
one of the most important Italian newspapers, first mentioned the concept of
“war tourism” in relation to the Sarajevo siege [see box]. In his book,
Gavazzeni writes that the article, titled “Holiday in Bosnia,” provided a
description of the “tourists” – dressed like hunters in camouflage and carrying
rifles, with their visits allegedly coordinated by an organization that was in
charge of bringing the Italians to Bosnia.
The article
also cited a statement by Gianni Tognoni, secretary of the Permanent Peoples’
Tribunal (PPT), regarding Italian citizens going to the former Yugoslavia to
witness and take part in the conflict. (The PPT is an international, independent
civil society tribunal founded in 1979 in Rome, Italy, designed to investigate
and rule on serious violations of human rights and peoples’ rights.)
Adding to
the growing evidence of “sniper tourists” was an American firefighter, John
Jordan, who had volunteered in the besieged city during the war. He later
testified in 2007 at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia at The Hague that he saw people who, despite accompanying Bosnian
Serb soldiers, were not professionals (they were carrying weapons that were not
suited to armed conflict, but rather to a hunting expedition). Jordan’s comments
came during the trial of General Dragomir Milosevic, commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija
Corps of the Army of Republika Srpska, who was later convicted of war crimes,
including conducting a campaign of sniping and shelling against civilians in
Sarajevo.
The topic,
however, went largely silent until gaining new life when, in 2022, director
Miran Zupanic premiered the documentary Sarajevo Safari at the Al Jazeera
Balkans DOC Film Festival. Alternating between archival footage and eyewitness
accounts, the documentary revealed the horrors of the siege and its lasting
impact on Sarajevo and its people. It also included a key interview with Edin
Subasic, a former intelligence agent of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and
Herzegovina and one of the first people to disclose concrete facts about the
“safaris.”
In a later
interview for Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso, Subasic said that he first became
aware of what was happening when he had to analyze the outcome of an
interrogation of a Serbian prisoner who had volunteered during the war. When
asked how he arrived at the front, the prisoner said he had traveled by bus,
together with other Serbs and a group of foreigners who carried expensive
hunting gear but were not part of a military organization. They were there
because they had paid to shoot people in the city, one of the snipers had
allegedly said to the prisoner.
Zupanic’s
documentary eventually caught the attention of journalist Gavazzeni. “In 2023, I
learned that … Zupanic had made the documentary Sarajevo Safari,” Gavazzeni told
Transitions, “but at that time the documentary wasn’t available to the general
public … So, I wrote to him saying that I had been impressed by his research and
that I wanted to understand more.” Following that request, Gavazzeni was granted
access to the documentary, which subsequently prompted his own investigation,
the criminal complaint, and the book.
Siege of
Sarajevo
The siege of
Sarajevo began on 6 April 1992, the same day the European Community recognized
the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
As tensions
escalated, many Bosnian Serbs left the city, while units of the Yugoslav
People’s Army (JNA), later reorganized as the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS),
together with Bosnian Serb forces, took up positions in the hills surrounding
the Bosnian capital.
What many
expected would be a rapid capture of Sarajevo instead became the longest siege
of a capital city in modern history. The siege lasted 1,425 days, ending on 29
February 1996 following the withdrawal of Bosnian Serb forces under the Dayton
Peace Agreement.
Throughout
those years, the city – and especially its civilian population – was the primary
target.
On average,
329 shells fell on Sarajevo every day, and it is estimated that more than 50,000
tons of artillery shells were fired during the siege.
The
bombardment and sniper campaign claimed the lives of 11,541 people and wounded
more than 56,000. Among the dead were 1,601 children. Men, women, children, and
the elderly all became victims of systematic attacks on civilians. Civilians of
all ages and backgrounds were killed or wounded as indiscriminate shelling and
sniper fire were used to terrorize the city’s population.
Snipers were
among the most feared aspects of daily life under siege because of the seemingly
random way they targeted civilians crossing streets, waiting for public
transport, or carrying out everyday activities. The infamous “Sniper Alley”
became a symbol of the constant danger facing Sarajevo’s residents.
In an
interview, Gavazzeni outlined the typical profile of a sniper tourist,
describing him as “a rich entrepreneur from the north of Italy, well-established
in his social circle. The common trait among all these individuals is that they
are gun enthusiasts; they frequent shooting ranges and hunting clubs, and they
also have a passion for hunting. Some have even been to Africa on safaris –
which, as you know, are quite expensive – and that is the kind of sniper we’re
talking about.”
According to
Gavazzeni, the meeting point was the northern Italian city of Trieste. Here, the
suspects would meet and travel to Belgrade, a city that served as the transit
hub where foreign participants met their military handlers. Finally, the
soldiers would accompany them to the hills surrounding Sarajevo.
In Zupanic’s
documentary, an anonymous source revealed that, besides paying army members to
walk them to the shooting positions, a price list, just like those for sport
hunting, existed. The list showed how much snipers had to pay to kill a woman, a
man, a soldier, or a child.
A Larger
Conspiracy
Subasic’s
statements also underscored the likelihood that the safaris could never have
taken place without the permission of the Bosnian Serb authorities, as well as
some kind of high-level, cross-border network – a theory that Gavazzeni also
supports. One of his sources, the journalist says, mentioned the existence of
international organizations with their headquarters in Western European
countries, part of “large security firms, which realized back then that there
was a business opportunity.” These firms were almost certainly linked to the
world of contractors, with their headquarters in London, he added, saying that
an organization was formed to fill the “gap,” in “that gray area between the
legal entity – the security firm – and the more shady companies that supply
contractors.”
The
allegations of the Bosnian Serb wartime leadership’s role in sniper tourism
might explain the reactions of Zeljka Cvijanovic, the former prime minister of
Republika Srpska. She claimed that Zupanic’s documentary was just an attempt to
portray events from the past in different ways, falsifying the actions of the
Republika Srpska. And East Sarajevo’s mayor, Ljubisa Cosic, at the time called
the documentary another “Satanization of Serbs.”
However,
this isn’t the first time Zupanic’s filmography addressed issues of systemic
human-rights violations in the region. His 2007 documentary, Children from
Petricek Hill, recounts the Yugoslav communist regime’s imprisonment of
hundreds of anti-communist civilians at the Teharje concentration camp near
Celje, Slovenia. The authorities then separated over 90 young children from
their parents, sending the children to the Petricek camp while most of their
parents were executed without trial.
Reaction from
the Ground
“Sarajevo is
enthusiastic because for more than 30 years they’ve been told that this was an
urban legend and that they were inventing everything,” Gavazzeni said.
Maida
Muminovic, the executive director of Mediacentar, a local media development
organization, agreed, saying that the recent investigations “hold a lot of
significance, even though so many years have passed.” She said that the local
media have been following developments closely and some politicians have also
called attention to the inquiries, adding that the foreign media had done an
especially good job of keeping the issue in the headlines.
“The topic
of these safari sniper trips to Sarajevo has been quite re-traumatizing for a
lot of people, because it brings back a lot of very difficult memories,”
Muminovic said, mentioning what she and her family had endured.
During the
war, a sniper from up in the hills above Sarajevo shot at her, her sister, and
her mother. “It was a really horrifying experience. We were running, and then
sitting hidden for a while. We could see people from the building next door who
were sheltered by the building, and they were rooting for us, kind of telling us
‘stop, lay low,’ and things like that,” she said.
“To learn
that people were actually coming from outside, not even related to this crazy
exhibition of violence that happened in Bosnia – toward people in Sarajevo – is
absolutely mind-blowing. To be able to come just to shoot people for the sake of
sheer, I don’t know, pleasure is despicable. I don’t even have words for that.”
Muminovic
is, however, doubtful that the culprits will end up being punished for their
crimes.
“I don’t
have a lot of faith that these people will face justice, but I get a lot of
satisfaction from knowing that they’re being exposed for what they have done –
for what they were capable of – and this is what, for the time being, gives me
some kind of peace of mind.”
Laura
Savoini recently finished her time as an editorial intern at Transitions. She is
studying for an Erasmus Mundus master’s degree in journalism. Jeremy Druker
provided reporting from Sarajevo.