Who were the ‘weekend snipers’ of Sarajevo?

Milanese prosecutors have launched an investigation into claims Italian citizens paid huge sums of money to the Bosnian Serb army in the mid-1990s to shoot civilians “for fun” during the Siege of Sarajevo.

Snipers killed 225 people, including 60 children, during the four-year siege, Zilha Mastalic Kosuta, of the Institute for Researching Crimes Against Humanity and International Law at Sarajevo University, told DW in 2022. To date, not one sniper has been brought to justice.

‘Weekend snipers’

The case, first reported by Italian newspapers Il Giornale in July, was opened on charges of “voluntary homicide aggravated by cruelty and abject motives” brought against unknown persons, stemming from a complaint filed by journalist and writer Ezio Gavazzeni.

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It has proved enough to launch an inquiry, led by prosecutor Alessandro Gobbis, into so-called “weekend snipers”, who allegedly took part in the siege, which lasted from April 1992 to February 1996 and claimed the lives of approximately 11,000 people.

Testimonies gathered from across northern Italy claim far-right sympathisers and gun and hunting enthusiasts met in Trieste before being transported to the hills surrounding Sarajevo, where they allegedly fired on civilians after paying what today would be the equivalent of 100,000 euros to Bosnian Serb militias loyal to Radovan Karadzic.

Gavazzeni’s complaint alleges a “price list” for killings, with children reportedly carrying a higher cost per kill, followed by armed men, women and then elderly civilians, who could allegedly be shot at no cost.

It also cites testimony, reported in Italian English-language news outlet ANSA, from former American firefighter John Jordan, who volunteered in Sarajevo during the siege. Given in 2007 during the trial of Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladic, it includes references to “tourist shooters”.

“On more than one occasion, I witnessed people who didn’t seem like locals to me because of their clothing, the weapons they carried, the way they were treated, managed, and even led by locals”. He later added that “when a boy shows up with a weapon that seems more suited to wild boar hunting in the Black Forest than to urban combat in the Balkans… When you see him handle it and you realise he’s a novice…”

Former Sarajevo mayor Benjamina Karic has reportedly submitted a report on these “rich foreigners engaged in inhumane activities” to the Milan Prosecutor’s Office.

‘Sarajevo Safari’

“While this phenomenon was little spoken of in the past, it was not unheard of,” said New Lines Magazine.

Among the first to speak out publicly was Luca Leone, an Italian journalist and author, whose 2014 book “The Bastards of Sarajevo” mentions foreign tourists from across Europe paying at checkpoints managed by Serbian paramilitaries in both Croatia and Bosnia to spend a weekend shooting civilians in Sarajevo.

This account corresponds to the 2022 documentary titled “Sarajevo Safari” by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic. Based on witness testimony from Slovenian and Bosnian intelligence officers, the film sets out how “tourist shooters” from Russia, Canada and America, as well as Italy, came to take part in the siege.

The story “sent shockwaves through the Balkans” said DW, with Zupanic personally experiencing “major backlash and hostile responses from some Bosnian Serb media outlets”.

Veljko Lazic – the president of an organisation for Srpska families of captured or killed fighters and missing civilians – described the claims made in the documentary as “an absolute and heinous lie” and called the film an “insult to Republika Srpska, its army and the Serb victims of the war”.

“I didn’t want to convince anyone of this story”, Zupanic told DW. “Quite simply, the film offers the testimonies of people who claim something – something so incredible that I, as a creator, felt obliged to make it known to the general public.”

“And the public will be the ones to judge.”