The German newspaper Frankfurter Sonntagszeitung has published an article with new details about the "Sarajevo Safari" and excerpts from an interview with Italian journalist and writer Ezio Gavazzeni. The article begins with statements by former US Marine and firefighter John Jordan, who first testified about the "tourist snipers" in February 2007 before the Hague Tribunal, and a transcript of the interrogation is available online, Deutsche Welle reports.
"Jordan saw several men in Sarajevo who caught his attention with their clothes, weapons, and the fact that they were led by locals. Some of them had rifles, which were more suitable for hunting wild boar in the Black Forest than for fighting in the city. It was clear that they were not capable of moving through the rubble. The same thing, he says, was confirmed to him by a colleague from the Mostar area."
"After Jordan's testimony about 'tourist snipers' nothing came of it. Perhaps because the stories about Canadians, Russians, Germans, Swiss and Italians who came to Sarajevo with hunting equipment and paid Serbian paramilitary units large sums to go and hunt people have long been considered urban legends," writes the Frankfurter Sonntagszeitung (FAS).
The German newspaper then takes a look at the file that Italian journalist Gavazzeni, with his lawyer Nicola Brigida and former judge Guido Salvini, handed over to the State Prosecutor's Office in Milan on January 28, 2025, and which the FAS took for inspection.
It is said that there were at least a hundred "war tourists" who called each other "shooters" - although a more appropriate term would be serial killers.
They reportedly paid up to 300,000 euros (in today's value): "Children cost the most, then men (preferably in uniform and armed), then women and finally the elderly could be killed for free."
The document claims that Italian military intelligence was informed about the "war tourists" in 1993 and a few months later announced that it had identified the starting point of the tours and had stopped them. But is it true? "No, today we know that this is not true. The trips to the front continued throughout 1994 and 1995," Gavazzeni said last Wednesday in Milan, the German newspaper reports.
Gavazzeni, who is the author of books about the murders of mafia-hunting judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, as well as the assassination of Pope John Paul II, is due to publish his latest book, "I cecchini del weekend" ("The Weekend Snipers"), in February. He has been approached by Netflix and Amazon to adapt the book, which will be published by Paper First.
What shocked him the most? “That the murdered child was undoubtedly the most sought-after trophy,” writes the Frankfurter Sonntagszeitung, continuing: “During the siege of Sarajevo, which began on April 6, 1992, and ended on February 29, 1996, 11,541 people were killed.”
Among the victims were 1,621 children. Every family in the city has at least one victim killed by a grenade or sniper. Sarajevo is surrounded by mountains over two thousand meters high, which descend into gentle hills. Snipers were positioned on these heights, overlooking the streets, squares, apartments. Or they were in skyscrapers, overlooking "Sniper Alley". People who had to go outside to get water or food ran along the sidewalks or took shelter near UN armored vehicles.
"Gavazzeni commissioned criminologist Martina Radica to profile the perpetrators. They were wealthy, "from the upper echelons of society," such as "doctors, judges, lawyers, notaries and entrepreneurs," who were addicted to hunting. "It was all based on the search for adrenaline. It was the joy of killing; feeling the power for the first time to end the life of a person with whom you have nothing in common," Gavazzeni tells the German newspaper.
Croatian investigative journalist Domagoj Margetić claims that Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić in 1992-1993 was also a year, as a twenty-year-old "collaborated with paying tourists", while he was a volunteer of the Bosnian Serb militia guarding the Jewish cemetery above Sarajevo.
Vučić's spokeswoman firmly rejected these accusations. FAS continues: "All this must now be verified by the Milan State Prosecutor's Office. The investigations have already begun. The Five Star Movement has filed a parliamentary request to make available the documents that the Italian intelligence services allegedly have on the "Sarajevo Safari".
