Dark Safari: Italy Investigates 'Sniper Safaris' in Bosnia

Wed Nov 12 2025 18:36:29 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

An investigation has been launched in Italy after claims emerged that tourists paid to shoot at civilians during the Bosnian war. Journalist Ezio Gavazzeni brought the allegations to light, describing a horrific trend among wealthy individuals seeking a twisted thrill.

Italian prosecutors are probing chilling allegations that some tourists, including Italians, paid to shoot civilians in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war. This practice, described by journalist Ezio Gavazzeni as a 'manhunt' for wealthy thrill-seekers, involved alarming rates for targeting men, women, and children. The investigation stems from testimony and detailed reports highlighting the grim reality of life during the siege, where over 11,000 people lost their lives. As Italy's Justice moves forward, the focus tightens on those who sought pleasure from war's atrocities.

The public prosecutor's office in Milan has opened an investigation into claims that Italian citizens travelled to Bosnia-Herzegovina on sniper safaris during the war in the early 1990s.

Italians and others are alleged to have paid large sums to shoot at civilians in the besieged city of Sarajevo.

The Milan complaint was filed by journalist and novelist Ezio Gavazzeni, who describes a manhunt by very wealthy people with a passion for weapons who paid to be able to kill defenceless civilians from Serb positions in the hills around Sarajevo.

Different rates were charged to kill men, women or children, according to some reports.

More than 11,000 people died during the brutal four-year siege of Sarajevo.

Yugoslavia was torn apart by war and the city was surrounded by Serb forces and subjected to constant shelling and sniper fire.

Similar allegations about human hunters from abroad have been made several times over the years, but the evidence gathered by Gavazzeni, which includes the testimony of a Bosnian military intelligence officer, is now being examined by Italian counter-terrorism prosecutor Alessandro Gobbis.

The charge is murder.

The Bosnian officer apparently revealed that his Bosnian colleagues found out about the so-called safaris in late 1993 and then passed on the information to Italy's Sismi military intelligence in early 1994.

The response from Sismi came a couple of months later. They found out that safari tourists would fly from the northern Italian border city of Trieste and then travel to the hills above Sarajevo.

Ezio Gavazzeni, who usually writes about terrorism and the mafia, first read about the sniper tours to Sarajevo three decades ago when Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported the story, but without firm evidence.

He returned to the topic after seeing Sarajevo Safari, a documentary film from 2022 which alleges that those involved in the killings came from several countries, including the US and Russia as well as Italy.

In 1992, late Russian nationalist writer and politician Eduard Limonov was filmed firing multiple rounds into Sarajevo from a heavy machine gun while being given a tour of hillside positions by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who was later convicted of genocide by an international tribunal.

The fact Milan prosecutors had opened a case was first reported back in July when Il Giornale website wrote that the Italians would arrive in the mountains by minivan, paying huge bribes to pass checkpoints as they went, pretending to be on a humanitarian mission.

After a weekend shooting in the war zone, they would return home to their normal lives. Gavazzeni described their actions as the indifference of evil.