Three decades ago Sarajevo earned a tragic place in history. Between April 1992 and February 1996, the city suffered the longest siege of our time: 1,425 days during which hundreds of thousands of people lived under the constant threat of mortars and snipers. It is estimated that more than 11,00 civilians were killed (including 1,601 children) and nearly 50,000 people were injured in one of the most tragic episodes of the Bosnian War.
Now that bloody siege threatens to slip back into the history books for an even (even) more terrifying episode. The Milan Prosecutor’s Office is investigating whether while thousands of Sarajevo residents were living hell on earth, a small, opulent and, above all, heartless group of foreigners fond of weapons were dedicated to practicing ‘human safaris’.
Four years of hell. The 20th century was generous in tragedies, but the siege of Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serb militias stands out among all of them for its data: it lasted nearly four years, left more than 11,000 civilians dead, tens of thousands injured, more than one and a half thousand children’s corpses and scenes of heartbreaking harshness, such as the murder of Admira and Boško, a couple of unarmed young people killed in May 1993 while crossing a bridge.
At the mercy of snipers. The photo of the young lovers, embraced on the ground, lifeless, stirred stomachs beyond the city and inspired the documentary ‘Romero and Juliet in Sarajevo’, released just a year later by Canadian filmmaker John Zaritsky. In reality, the story of Admira and Boško was just one more drop in the turbulent and gloomy ocean of that siege.
During the siege, Zmaja od Bosne Street and Messe Selimovic Boulevard, then nicknamed ‘Sniper Avenue’, also became popular. Its name says it all: those who crossed it risked slipping into the sights of some gunman willing to pull the trigger without paying attention to who would receive the bullet, civilian or military, man or woman, child, adult or elderly.
Something more than a war? That wars are fertile ground for barbarism is nothing new. We continue to check it even in the middle of 2025. The question that has now arisen in Europe, more specifically in Italy, is whether all the people who fired bullets during the siege of Sarajevo were militiamen, soldiers, people desperate to protect their lives… or were there also foreigners who simply wanted to participate in ‘manhunts’.
That is, people willing to pay large sums of money to take their rifle, travel to another country located hundreds of kilometers away and dedicate themselves to hunting people like someone who goes out to hunting grounds in search of wild boar, roe deer or hares.
An ancient hum. It’s actually not a new suspicion. Rumors have circulated since the 1990s about ‘human safaris’, war tourism and rifle-wielding foreigners during the siege of Sarajevo. Perhaps one of the most controversial documents on the subject is a short recording that shows the Russian writer Eduard Limonov with Radovan Karadzic (now convicted of genocide) and snipers in full action. At one point Limonov is seen taking a gun, although there is no suspicion that he participated in ‘human safaris’.
A few years ago the Slovenian director Miran Xupanič even recorded a documentary (‘Sarajevo Safari’) in which he talks about how supposedly during the 90s wealthy foreigners paid to shoot the city’s residents.
A complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office. If the issue is in the news today it is because, almost 30 years after the siege, the Milan Prosecutor’s Office has decided to open an investigation to clarify whether there were indeed people with a lot of money and little or no heart who participated in ‘safaris’ taking advantage of the siege of Sarajevo.
Specifically, it studies whether there were groups of foreigners (not only Italians) who paid high sums, between 80,000 and 100,000 euros at the current exchange rate, to get on a plane in Trieste, land in Belgrade and then be taken to one of the hills of Sarajevo to hold a rifle and give free rein to their sadism.
But… Why now? That the Milan Prosecutor’s Office has made a move just now, 30 years later, is no coincidence. The process has been launched following a complaint filed by journalist Ezio Gavazzeni, who lives in Milan and who has dedicated himself to collecting evidence that points to the existence of these ‘human safaris’. Thanks to his investigations, Gavazzeni has prepared a 17-page complaint that has the support of two notable figures: Guido Salvini, a former magistrate, and Benjamina Karic, who governed Sarajevo between 2021 and 2024.
The existence of this weekend war tourism has also been confirmed in recent weeks by a leading figure in the Italian diplomatic mission in Sarajevo during the Bosnia-Herzegovina war. In an interview he has acknowledged both the existence of these bloody ‘safaris’ and that at the time the Italian secret services (SISMI) received information about what was happening in Sarajevo, which led them to investigate it and put an end to it shortly after.
“There were Germans, French, English…” Gavazzeni acknowledges that rumors about ‘sniper tourism’ are not new. He remembers having read reports about similar cases already in the 1990s, but what triggered his investigative spring, what led him to investigate the case further and finally present the complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office was Zupanič’s documentary.
“I began a correspondence with the director and, from there, I expanded my research until I gathered enough material,” he tells The Guardian. After collecting this material, he defends that there were “many Italians” involved, although he also speaks of Germans, French, English… Even “rich and relevant Spaniards.” “People from all Western countries who paid large sums of money to be taken there to shoot civilians,” summarizes the researcher.
One complaint, two achievements. For now, Gavanezzi has already achieved two objectives. First, that the Milan Prosecutor’s Office initiate an investigation for an alleged crime of voluntary manslaughter with aggravating cruelty and abject motives. Second, three decades later the press around the world is talking about the tragic siege of Sarajevo and the ‘sniper avenue’.
“We are talking about wealthy people, with reputations, businessmen who during the siege paid to kill defenseless civilians. They left Trieste and later returned to continue with their normal and respectable lives in the eyes of everyone,” explains the journalist in a recent interview with La Republica.
The issue would have already motivated an investigation by the Bosnian Public Ministry that ended up being archived and in the country itself there are institutions that consider that the alleged ‘sniper tourism’ is nothing more than “an urban legend.” At the moment the shadow of the accusations has already fallen on Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, who has categorically denied any connection with the case.
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