80-year-old Italian man summoned as part of ‘human safari’ probe.
Italian authorities have officially registered the first suspect in an investigation into “sniper tourism”, a gruesome phenomenon in which foreigners allegedly paid to shoot civilians ‘for fun’ during Siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s.
The Milan attorney general’s office has summoned an 80-year-old former truck driver from Pordenone, in Italy’s northeast, for questioning on 9 February.
The man, who was not named, faces charges of several counts of premeditated murder, aggravated by base motives, sources told news agency Reuters.
During a search of the 80-year-old’s home, Carabinieri officers reportedly found seven legally owned weapons, including two handguns and four shotguns.
Witnesses told prosecutors that the man had previously “boasted” about taking part in “human safaris” during the war, according to Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.
The investigation began last November and centres on claims that groups of Westerners travelled to the besieged Bosnian capital in the early 1990s.
The enquiry, opened by prosecutor Alessandro Gobbis, is seeking to identify the so-called “weekend snipers” who participated in the Siege of Sarajevo, during which more than 11,000 people were killed between 1992 and 1996.
The Italian individuals accused of being involved in the killings would allegedly gather in the north-eastern city of Trieste before being taken to the hills surrounding Sarajevo where they were permitted to fire on the population of the besieged city after allegedly paying Bosnian Serb militias sums between €80,000 and €100,000.
The case, which stems from a complaint filed by journalist and writer Ezio Gavazzeni, reconstructs a series of testimonies and contacts with Bosnian sources who reported the presence of Italian citizens in the hills surrounding Sarajevo in the early 1990s.
The probe was fuelled further by the 2022 documentary Sarajevo Safari by director Miran Zupanič, which featured anonymous testimonies from a former Serbian soldier and a contractor.
