Prosecutors have launched an investigation into tourists accused of paying £70,000 to affix a ‘human safari’ throughout the Siege of Sarajevo – but who’re these snipers?
The ‘weekend snipers’ allegedly took part within the 4 yr long siege that took place between April 1992 and February 1996 which caused greater than 11,000 deaths.
In response to a legal grievance, these tourists were flown from Italy to Bosnia where they’d pay to shoot residents within the besieged city on the weekends.
These alleged weekend trips have been coined as ‘sniper safaris’ with court filings claiming there was a further cost to kill children.
The investigation, headed by prosecutor Alessandro Gobbis, was launched after journalist Ezio Gavazzeni filed a legal grievance of ‘murder aggravated by cruelty and despicable motives’ against the Italians who travelled to affix the killing trips.
Investigators hope to trace down those that participated within the alleged ‘safaris’, in keeping with Italian media.
Gavazzeni told La Repubblica that his legal suit ‘exposes a component of society that hides its truth under the carpet.’
He also described those reportedly involved as ‘wealthy individuals with reputations’ and ‘entrepreneurs’ who paid to kill defenceless civilians.
Although the identities of those ‘weekend snipers’ aren’t yet known, the workings behind the trips have been discovered.
Throughout the longest siege in history, people would gather in Trieste, northwestern Italy, on Fridays for a weekend of ‘hunting’ – who arranged the trips stays unclear.
After meeting, they’d be allegedly flown to the hills surrounding Sarajevo where they’d pay President Radovan Karadzic loyalist militias to shoot residents.
In 2016, President Karadzic was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal. After an appeal in 2019, he was sentenced to life.
Gavazzeni claims the participants got tariffs for the different sorts of kills, with children costing essentially the most and elderly people freed from charge.
He claims participants would go away for the weekend, do the killings and return home, continuing life as normal.
‘[A participant] left Trieste for the manhunt. After which he returned and continued his life as usual, respectable in everyone’s eyes,’ Gavazzeni said.
‘Individuals with a passion for weapons, to indulge, preferring to go to bed with a rifle, with money at their disposal and the appropriate contacts of facilitators between Italy and Serbia. It’s the indifference of evil: becoming God and remaining unpunished,’ he added.
The 17-page court filing includes different testimonies. One was from an American firefighter, John Jordan, who volunteered throughout the siege.
He referred to ‘tourist shooters’ who didn’t seem to be locals to him, carrying weapons.
Serbia has denied any involvement within the killings, but investigators imagine that their intelligence services can have been aware of the tourist trips.
Dzemil Hodzic, 42, who grew up in Sarajevo within the Nineties told Al Jazeera that the findings got here as no surprise to him.
‘My brother was killed by a Serb sniper while he was playing tennis in our neighbourhood. We are going to never know if it was considered one of those that paid to achieve this.’
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MORE: Tourists ‘paid £70,000’ to shoot innocent people in ‘human safari’ hunting trips to Sarajevo