It is one of the darkest episodes of the Bosnian genocide. This episode, buried for decades, is now rising to the surface of Italy’s conscience. But Italy is not alone. The wall of silence finally crumbled earlier this week when the Milan public prosecutor’s office opened a criminal investigation into so-called “human safaris” to Sarajevo, which was besieged by Bosnian Serb forces in the early 1990s.
These “human safaris” were nothing but leisure trips taken by at least 200 Italian nationals during the 47 months that the siege of the city lasted. A brutal siege that left 11,000 dead between 1993 and 1995. The victims included 1,601 minors.
Tourists paid large sums of money (approximately 90,000 euros, according to the first hypothesis of the investigation) to these creepy travel agencies for a weekend of war. Killing a child is more expensive, but shooting a woman or the elderly can be free.
The Italian tourists were traveling in camouflage from the regions of Triveneto, Piedmont and Lombardy. They flew from Trieste to Belgrade using the infrastructure of the former Serbian charter and tourist airline Abiogenex.
They paid bribes on the pretext of participating in a humanitarian mission and passed through checkpoints in minibuses. Once in Sarajevo, they were stationed alongside Bosnian Serb forces on the hills surrounding the city, firing from the air at defenseless civilians.
They were people who paid money to get permission to harm or directly kill others. They were hunters of humans. After “living the experience,” they returned home as if nothing had happened.
documentary, indictment
According to various accounts, justice would be delayed for more than 30 years – but only for the guilty, who were Italian nationals – and although the defunct Trans-Alpine military secret service, SISMI, would have been aware of these events since the beginning of 1994.
The Milan public prosecutor’s office began working on the matter following a complaint filed by the journalist and author on January 28th. Ezio Gavazzenireceived legal assistance from a lawyer Nicola Brigida and former judge Guido Salvinispecialized in the fight against terrorism.
prosecutor Alessandro GobisThe investigative agencies investigating this case are currently working to determine the identities of these 200 “war tourists” who they plan to charge with voluntary manslaughter, aggravated by cruelty and obscene motives.
In a statement carried by the newspaper, Gavazzeni said: “There were wealthy businessmen and professionals, not only from northern Italy, but also from Spain, France, other European countries, Canada and the United States, who were paid to go to the mountains around Sarajevo and shoot people.” Il sole 24 ore.
The 17-page complaint includes a report by Sarajevo’s former mayor, benjamina calicThere is no mention of their identities, only three men are mentioned. One was from Turin, one from Trieste, and the other from Milan, and they owned a private cosmetic surgery clinic. However, the author suspects that they were “people who knew how to use weapons and rifles in any case. They are currently between 65 and 80 years old.”
Gavazzeni more accurately depicts the profile of the suspects: owners of large fortunes, fans of traditional safaris, lovers of weapons with psychopathic or sadistic traits, in search of adrenaline and “human” trophies.
“While I am relieved to see Italian authorities finally acting on this information, we have known for a long time that this barbaric ‘war tourism’ was taking place,” he noted in a conversation with this newspaper. giorgio constandiBosnian genocide researcher and founder of Dorina Voices, the first educational tool on the genocide.
Konstandi praises members of the Bosnian community, including: Harris Imamoviche dealt with this topic in the novel Vedran and the fireman (Sandorf, 2022). “In addition to Imamovic’s book, the Slovenian coach Milan Zupanic “At the end of the same year, we premiered the documentary ‘Sarajevo Safari’ at the Al Jazeera Balkans Documentary Film Festival,” the researcher recalls.
Zupanich himself said he learned of the story through a film producer. Francie Zaik He spent the next four years making this documentary. “When he told me about the safari, my reaction was that it couldn’t happen. Man-hunting is a story, an urban legend,” the filmmaker declared in a newspaper interview three years ago. vulcan insight.
“The most time-consuming part was finding witnesses,” Zupanich admitted at the time. “Franci (Zaik) took it on, so we contacted another intelligence officer who was working in the Analytical Service of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time and was investigating the incident that confirmed the appearance of those hunters on the battlefields of Sarajevo.” That is the main source of information for this documentary.
Imamovic, who advised a former Bosnian member of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s tripartite president. Šefik Jaferovicshares with EL ESPAÑOL another decisive testimony in this story: a testimony given by a former US Marine. john jordan Bosnian Serb military commander on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Ratko Mladicheld in 2007.
Jordan, a volunteer firefighter who worked in besieged Sarajevo, said: “I’ve seen many times people who don’t look like they’re local because of the way they dress, the weapons they carry, or the way they’re treated by the locals.” “It was clear that the individuals who were being guided by men who knew the terrain had no connection to the terrain at all. Their clothing and the weapons they were carrying led us to believe they were tourist shooters.”
“When a man appears with a weapon that seems better suited for boar hunting in the Black Forest than for urban warfare in the Balkans…you can tell by the way he handles it that he is a novice,” he said 18 years ago.
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