Prosecutors in Milan have initiated a comprehensive investigation into grave allegations that Italian citizens engaged in 'human safari' or 'sniper tourism' during the brutal four-year Siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s. These wealthy foreign gun enthusiasts are accused of paying substantial sums, reportedly between £70,000 and £88,000 (or up to €100,000 in today's terms), to members of the Bosnian Serb army to shoot at innocent civilians for pleasure, with horrifying reports indicating extra charges for killing children.

The investigation suggests that individuals, often with ties to hard-right circles, would travel from the northern Italian border city of Trieste to Belgrade on the Serbian airline Aviogenex for these 'weekend sniper' trips. They were allegedly transported to positions controlled by Bosnian Serbs in the hills surrounding Sarajevo to indiscriminately target passersby, whose everyday lives were already dominated by the constant fear of being struck by sniper fire. Streets such as Ulica Zmaja od Bosne and Meša Selimović Boulevard, which served as the main road into Sarajevo and to its airport, became infamously known as 'Sniper Alley' due to the extreme danger they posed to residents.

The Siege of Sarajevo, which endured from 1992 to 1996, stands as the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare. During this harrowing period, over 10,000 people were killed in Sarajevo by relentless shelling and sniper fire from Serb-Bosnian militias. The city was surrounded by Serb forces and subjected to constant bombardment and sniper attacks as Yugoslavia was torn apart by war.

The current Milanese complaint was filed by writer and journalist Ezio Gavazzeni, a figure known for his work on terrorism and the mafia. Gavazzeni's efforts were significantly bolstered by the support of former magistrate Guido Salvini and Benjamina Karic, who served as Mayor of Sarajevo from 2021 to 2024. Gavazzeni revisited these decades-old allegations after seeing the 2022 documentary 'Sarajevo Safari' by Slovenian filmmaker Miran Zupanic, which gathered testimonies about wealthy individuals from various countries, including Italy, the US, and Russia, allegedly paying to target residents.

Lead prosecutor Alessandro Gobbi, an Italian counter-terrorism prosecutor, is meticulously examining the gathered evidence. This includes the testimony of a Bosnian military intelligence officer with the initials E. S., who claimed that Bosnian colleagues discovered these 'safaris' in late 1993 and subsequently passed the information to Italy's Sismi military intelligence in early 1994. The Italian intelligence agency reportedly confirmed the presence of 'safari' tourists flying from Trieste to the hills above Sarajevo and informed their Bosnian counterparts that they had 'put a stop to it,' leading to the cessation of such trips within a few months. Further testimony comes from a Slovenian intelligence official, victims, and a wounded firefighter who, during the 2002 trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague, described 'tourist shooters' distinguished by their unique clothing and weapons compared to Serbian soldiers.

Gavazzeni alleges that a substantial number of individuals, potentially 'at least a hundred' tourists, participated in these 'weekend sport' mass-shootings of civilians. He cited examples such as a Milanese businessman owning a private cosmetic surgery clinic, alongside citizens from Turin and Trieste. Gavazzeni characterized their actions as the 'indifference of evil,' noting that these 'wealthy people, with reputations - businessmen - who during the siege of Sarajevo paid to kill unarmed civilians' would leave Trieste for a 'manhunt' and then return to their 'respectable daily lives.' While an investigation by the Bosnian Attorney General’s Office had apparently stalled due to the complexities of probing such a case in a country deeply scarred by war, the Bosnian consul in Milan, Dag Dumrukcic, has pledged his country's 'full cooperation' with Italy. He expressed eagerness 'to uncover the truth about such a cruel matter and settle accounts with the past.' Prosecutors and police are actively identifying and compiling a list of potential witnesses to provide testimony in this ongoing inquiry.