There Milan Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation into a chilling case that brings to mind the infamous “Sniper Avenue” in Sarajevo, the city besieged from 1992 to 1996 by the Bosnian Serb militias after the Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia. It was a long avenue that ran through the center of the capital, connecting the airport and the western part of the city with the historic center. From the surrounding hills, the snipers they shot passers-by who had no other choice but to cross that road to get water, food or simply to move, exposing themselves to the risk of being killed. It is estimated that over 11,000 civilians were murdered in this way.
Anyone passing by risked being hit: the area thus became one of the most tragic symbols of the siege of Sarajevo. The investigation concerns an alleged crime of voluntary homicide aggravated by cruelty and base motives. The central thesis is that some Italians paid large sums of money to soldiers belonging to the army Radovan Karadžićthe former Bosnian Serb leader convicted of genocide and other crimes against humanityto travel to Sarajevo at the weekend and shoot at civilians.
A UN report confirmed that i snipers operated in squads around the city and targeted deliberately the civiliansi non-combatants hey rescuers who sought to help the victims, as well as personnel and facilities of the United Nations Protection Force and other UN agencies. Simple citizens, linked to far-right circles and gun enthusiasts, would have purchased this “service” as a sort of human safari in the besieged city. According to the complaint, they would have left Trieste with flights of the Serbian company Aviogenex, which at the time operated from the Italian airport. To become “weekend snipers” they would have paid the equivalent of 80,000-100,000 eurosaccording to the first investigative hypotheses. Shooting children cost more.
Among the witnesses would be an agent of the Bosnian secret service, who would have been aware of the facts and claims that i Italian secret services (present in Sarajevo) had been informed already in 1993and which could exist on this topic confidential files. Furthermore, an official of the Slovenian secret services, some victims and an injured firefighter who, during the trial of the former Serbian leader, would also be aware of the facts Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague, spoke of “tourist snipers” recognizable by clothes and weapons different from those of the Serbian soldiers.
The Sarajevo Safari and the “weekend snipers”: the story of the crimes
“Sarajevo Safari”, a 2022 documentary directed by the Slovenian director Miran Zupanič, addresses shocking allegations about the grisly weekend tours, which began at the start of the war in 1992 and lasted for several months between 1993 and 1994. The documentary reported the testimony of a former secret service agentwho remained anonymous, who was working for “an important American agency” at the time. On condition of anonymity, the former agent spoke of rich foreigners that they would pay to visit Bosnian Serb army snipers and shoot at the population in the capital Sarajevo.
Another man, Edin Subašića former analyst for the Bosnian army, in the documentary recounts the information obtained from the military security services, which had captured a volunteer fighter from Paraćin, Serbia. During interrogation, the prisoner would confirmed the presence of foreigners on the battlefield, according to what Subašić reports. Subašić describes the interrogation of the prisoner, who spoke of Italians transported together with Serbian volunteers from Belgrade to the city of Pale, near Sarajevo, a stronghold of the Bosnian Serbs. Subašić reports in detail the conversation between the prisoner and the Italians, who allegedly said of don’t get paid to fightbut that they themselves would pay to go to the front.
The war in Bosnia: the roots of the conflict that led to tourist sniping
There Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslaviafounded in 1943 during World War II, it was a federation composed of six republics: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia. After the end of the war, it was ruled by Marshal Josip Tito. After his death in 1980an ideology based on a ethnic nationalism began to grow and in 1991 the country began to disintegrate.
The federal republics they began to promote increasingly nationalist policies, favoring their own ethnic groups and provoking the breakup of Yugoslaviawith Slovenia and Croatia declaring independence in 1991, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina In the 1992. Shortly after independence, the Serbian forces occupied the city of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, starting a three-year campaign of terror and persecution, with planned and systematic killings of non-Serbs, mostly Bosnian Muslims. Since May 1992, Bosnian Serb forces under the command of the General Ratko Mladić they used artillery and snipers to hit civilian areas of the city and key institutions, causing deaths, injuries and terror among the population.
THE’siege of Sarajevo provoked further 11,000 deathsincluding 1,600 children. Between 1992 and 1995, citizens were subjected to daily bombings and sniper attacks, completely isolated from the rest of the world. The war in Bosnia and the genocide almost caused 100,000 civilian deaths and beyond 2 million people forced to leave their homes. The conflict officially ended with the Dayton Accordssigned on November 21, 1995 in Dayton, Ohio, United States, establishing, among other things, the restitution of the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign republic within the dissolved Yugoslavia.
