The Sarajevo City Council approved on January 28 the decision for the City of Sarajevo to officially join the criminal proceedings being conducted before the judicial bodies in Milan, Italy, regarding the case of the so-called "sniper tourists", suspected of killing civilians during the siege of Sarajevo in the 1992–1995 war.
The investigations in Italy began after a criminal complaint filed by Italian writer and journalist Ezio Gavazzeni, who claims that foreign nationals paid large sums of money to go to Republika Srpska Army positions around Sarajevo and, mainly "for fun," shot with snipers at civilians in the besieged city.
Italian media first reported in early November last year that the Milan prosecutor's office had opened an investigation into the case. Gavazzeni, who has declined media interviews, said at a press conference in Milan that he is expected to publish a book on the subject in February.
According to him, he had encountered the first allegations about the presence of foreigners on the front lines in 1995 in an article in the newspaper Corriere della Sera, while his interest was rekindled in 2022 after watching the documentary "Sarajevo Safari" by Slovenian director Miran Zupanić.
The Milan prosecutor's office is expected to inform the public about the results of the investigation in March 2026. If an indictment is filed and guilt is proven, this would be the first case in Europe where individuals would be held criminally accountable for the killing of civilians in Sarajevo by snipers.
Meanwhile, Bosnia and Herzegovina's judicial authorities have announced that they are verifying the claims, but so far no sniper has been prosecuted on the basis of individual responsibility for the killing of civilians, including children.
According to data from victims' associations and judgments from international courts, during the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo, every tenth child killed in the city was shot by snipers, while over 14,000 children were injured. The Hague Tribunal has found in its decisions that the sniper campaign was intended to terrorize Sarajevo civilians.
