Did Rich Foreigners Pay to Shoot Civilians in Bosnia?

What's the most depressing piece of global news you've heard this year?

There's been plenty to choose from.

Whether it's the atrocities committed in the city of Alasia in Sudan to the revelations coming out about the extent and brutality of state repression in Assad era Syria to headlines from global

battlefields in Ukraine, Gaza, the Congo, the Sahel, and elsewhere. But

this November, an Italian journalist and a group of investigators in the city of Milan added yet another contender to that conversation. a series of horrific

that conversation. a series of horrific crimes that may have gone unpunished for over three decades. They were called the sniper safaris, and although they've been discussed as rumors ever since the

conclusion of the Bosnian war, they've never resulted in a known formal investigation in any country, let alone a prosecution. But if the information

a prosecution. But if the information that Italy now possesses is accurate, then wealthy citizens from Italy and across the Western world might have descended onto the besieged city of

Sievo and paid for a sort of holiday that should be unthinkable. Taking up

positions in a sniper nest, staring down their targets at Bosnia's infamous sniper rallies, and killing the civilians unlucky enough to end up in their crosshairs.

What does it mean to go on a a sniper safari? To answer that, we've got to

safari? To answer that, we've got to start not by discussing these people's journeys, but their destination. The

city of Sievo is the capital of Bosnia and Herzkavina, usually referred to simply as Bosnia. Today, the nation is divided into two autonomous entities.

The Federation of Bosnia and Herzgavina, made up of predominantly ethnic Bosnjaks and Croats, and the Republic of Serpska, mostly home to ethnic Serbs. But back in the early 1990s, with a pre-war

population of about half a million people, the city of Sievo was the capital of a nation that had only just declared its independence from the now former state of Yugoslavia. Then, as now

Bosnia and the rest of the ex Yugoslav states of the Balkan region are places where ethnic tensions can run very hot.

And when Bosnia and Herzgavina declared independence, the nation's ethnic Serb population took issue with the idea that they would have to be minority members of a single unified nation. In their

view, the Republic of Serbs that we know today shouldn't have been an autonomous region within the country, but its own sovereign state with Bosnjak majority areas firmly under its control. Their

response was the siege of Sievo, an encirclement of the city that began in early of April 1992 and would continue for nearly 4 years straight. To put it

bluntly, the siege of Sievo was misery in human form. Some 3 to 400,000 civilians were trapped inside the city along with around 70,000 troops fighting with the Army of the Republic of Bosnia

and Herzavina who had mostly small arms at their disposal and lacked the capability to break out. Pointing their

guns inward was a far smaller force, no more than 23,000 Bosnian Serbs at their strongest had typically a good deal less than that. But they had the benefit of

than that. But they had the benefit of heavy artillery, tanks, and encirclement. They could see into the

encirclement. They could see into the city from all angles, anticipate and respond to any massing of enemy forces and rain down hell upon the people within. They also had the support of the

within. They also had the support of the neighboring and much more powerful nation of Serbia, led by a man whose name now lives alongside some of the most despised war criminals in history.

Sloan Mallosovich, the final leader of Yugoslavia. Many of the besieging forces

Yugoslavia. Many of the besieging forces were in effect under Mallosvich's direct control or were otherwise former members of the Yugoslav armed forces who very conveniently showed up around Savva

wearing new uniforms but firing most of their own weapons. Even the tanks and artillery pieces that had essentially come from Mallovich split off to the Republic of Serbska as part of the break up of Yugoslavia. and Serbia was more

than happy to provide all the ammunition fuel supplies intelligence, and diplomatic support that the Bosnian Serbs needed. Now, it's

important to understand that although Sievo was under siege and bore the blunt of this entire conflict, the ultimate goal of the Bosnian Serbs and Mallovich was not to capture the city. Instead,

their goal was to force the leadership of both Bosnia and the international community to accept the partition of the state and allow the creation of a sovereign Serb nation that was particularly important to Serbs in

Bosnia and Serbia because at that time Serbia was still part of a union with modern-day Montenegro with ethnic Serbs making up a national majority but not by all that much. Regardless of their

motivations, the Bosnian Serbs objective was to use Sievo as leverage. accept

what the Bosnian Serbs were proposing and all this pain and suffering could be over tomorrow. As such, they didn't have

over tomorrow. As such, they didn't have to put themselves at risk by going into the city and risking intense urban combat where the less equipped Bosnian defenders could have leveled the playing

field at close quarters. Instead, their

goal was to inflict pain and to impose terror on a scale so great that it would become unjustifiable for either Bosnia's leadership or the international community to allow the siege to continue. To accomplish that, Bosian

continue. To accomplish that, Bosian Serb fighters could choke off the city from external supplies of food and water. They could cut the power and fuel

water. They could cut the power and fuel supply. They could shell the city

supply. They could shell the city indiscriminately and launch raiding actions to get in, cause whatever chaos they could, and then get back out before the other side could rally. And as

dangerous as each of those weapons were, Bosnian Serb forces knew that they could leverage one final tool to achieve maximum effect. Snipers. Firing from

maximum effect. Snipers. Firing from

long range, using the hills surrounding the city to build snipers nests and operating in small teams to ensure maximum damage, Bosnian Serb forces spent the vast majority of the siege

shooting into the city. When Bosnian

defenders poked their heads up, then of course, Serb fighters did all they could to wipe them out. But their list of approved targets went far beyond just combatants. Snipers were cleared to

combatants. Snipers were cleared to shoot the elderly, clearly unarmed non-combatants, children, all in the name of imposing costs and misery so

profound on the leaders of Bosnia that they would be forced to capitulate.

Counter snipers did the best they could from the inside, but they fought from a clear disadvantage. And as the siege

clear disadvantage. And as the siege settled into its yearslong rhythm, Bosnian Serb forces used the breakdown of civil order to their advantage. With

food and water scarce, civilians were forced to leave their homes regularly.

And whether they were trying to move across their neighborhoods, standing in bread lines, or collecting water, they were operating in predictable ways in full view of snipers who feared

absolutely nothing by killing them. As

the siege wore on, snipers became highly adept at manipulating the city's civilian population, killing an innocent person to draw the attention of rescuers who could also be shot, firing misplaced

attacks to cause civilians to run into a predetermined line of fire, and even relying on gun sites that had been modified to show the right range to shoot from a given sniper nest. Although

the firing of the snipers wasn't continual, and due to the besieging forc's small numbers, they could only devote so many snipers to the effort while holding the siege, they engineered terror in Siova. Nonetheless, individual

streets were known as sniper rallies, where sniper forces were known to always be present, always watching, firing down from the surrounding area or leveraging dark windows where they'd managed to

infiltrate the city. According to data presented at war crimes trials long after the fact, that firing was daily, wellcoordinated, and involved the firing of hundreds of shots each day on average. According to the research and

average. According to the research and documentation center in Sievo, the death toll from the entire siege of Sievo stands at 5,434

civilians, including 1,61 children, with 56,000 more civilians injured, including 15,000 children. According to UNICEF, by

15,000 children. According to UNICEF, by the end of the siege, at least two out of every five children in the city had been shot at directly by snipers, and just over half had witnessed a person

die. Of the dead, official estimates

die. Of the dead, official estimates suggest that around a thousand of the killed civilians had been shot by snipers, along with several thousand wounded. But because of the many issues

wounded. But because of the many issues involved with counting the dead during the siege, categorizing the different kinds of gunshot fatalities and determining the cause of death for people killed in areas where they were

also shelled by artillery at or around the time of their death, it's likely that the proportion of the dead due to sniper fire was far greater. Also,

during the siege, of 6100 Bosnian defenders lost their lives along with 2,241 Bosnian Serb fighters on the besieging side.

Now, we paint such a detailed picture of Sievo's urban hellscape because we'd like you to really understand what it means to say that a person went to Sievo on a sniper safari. Over the rest of our

discussion today, we'd encourage you to remember two things. That when we talk about a person paying to participate in sniper operations, firing into Sievo, that this is what they were

participating in. and that at the time

participating in. and that at the time of the siege there were zero illusions across the globe about exactly what was happening. The United Nations carried

happening. The United Nations carried out 13,000 individual airlift flights during this period to keep the besieged population alive. The NATO alliance

population alive. The NATO alliance carried out sustained operations to bring the siege to an end and locked down the airspace above the city for over 2 years. people in the nations

we're going to be discussing across Europe and North America in particular knew damn well what was going on in Sievo during this time and there is simply no way to claim that a person who

hypothetically went on a sniper safari during this time would have somehow failed to understand what they were a part of. So the first question we can

part of. So the first question we can answer is the simplest. What is a sniper safari? In short, it's an act of war

safari? In short, it's an act of war tourism. recreational, deliberate travel

tourism. recreational, deliberate travel to an active conflict zone in order to engage in some sort of sightseeing, exploration, or other adventure where the perception of thrill and danger are

typically a part of the appeal. But in

the case of the allegations around Sievo, the conduct of the alleged perpetrators goes well beyond passive tourism. Those wealthy foreigners who

tourism. Those wealthy foreigners who purportedly traveled to Sievo were paying for the privilege to recreationally hunt humans. Now, Saribo

isn't the first time that an act of recreational human hunting has taken place across history. It's not unheard of for individual serial killers or aspiring killers to take part in the

practice as Robert Hansen did in the US state of Alaska during the 1970s and 80s. Nor is it entirely unheard of

80s. Nor is it entirely unheard of during periods of war. During the

Spanish Civil War, wealthy young men would hunt peasants on horseback for reasons that were partly recreational.

And it's relatively common during wars for either combatants or armed civilians to track down and eliminate targeted individuals or groups for any number of reasons. There are also plenty of cases

reasons. There are also plenty of cases in wars around the world where individuals have traveled to fight alongside a state or non-state actor, possibly because some of those people as individuals wanted to take advantage of

the opportunity and satisfy some dark desire to claim human lives. But the

specific allegations bubbling up around Sievo that foreign actors would have paid to be escorted into the war zone to gain the privilege to shoot at civilians from long range would be a wartime

industry without a known modern equivalent around the world. Now, rumors

of sniper safaris during the Bosnian war are nothing new, and in parts of Bosnia and the wider Balkan region, they're largely understood to be yet another of the wartime injustices that have so far

gone unpunished. Italian media in

gone unpunished. Italian media in particular referenced the likely existence of sniper safari customers all the way back in the 1990s. While a 1992 BBC documentary Serbian Epics showed a

Russian extremist named Edward Limonov who had come to Serbia to fight and was allowed to fire onto the city using a machine gun for whatever purposes he liked. It's important to note that the

liked. It's important to note that the documentary made no claim that Limonov was paying for the privilege, making him more akin to, say, a person going to fight on either side of the Ukraine war

or an ideological extremist going to join the Islamic State in the mid2010s.

Back in 2007, a retired US Marine named John Jordan testified in a war crimes tribunal after volunteering as a firefighter in Sievo during the siege and claimed that he had seen non-locals

being escorted around known sniper positions by Serb fighters carrying unusual weapons and dressed in a way that would suggest they weren't part of any group fighting in the siege. The

2014 book by Italian journalist Luca Leon, The Bastards of Sievo, alleged that Italians and other Europeans had regularly paid to go on weekend trips to the city to shoot civilians. But the

rumors of sniper safaris in Sievo didn't really go mainstream, at least outside of Bosnia, until 2022 when Slovenian documentarian Miran Zupinets premiered

his film Sarvo Safari. The documentary

laid out a clear pipeline for foreign tourists looking to take part in the siege who had first arrived to the Serbian capital city of Belgrade and then take advantage of army logistical travel to move into the Bosnian combat

zones. The film relied on testimony from

zones. The film relied on testimony from an anonymous Slovenian intelligence officer who had claimed that he personally witnessed seven sniper shootings by paying foreign tourists and an intelligence officer from Bosnia who

had interrogated a Serbian fighter who had in turn claimed that he had encountered several Italian foreigners who had paid to shoot civilians. Among

the film's other allegations was the idea that Bosnian Serb forces had even gone to the trouble of putting together a price list. To kill an adult was already expensive, but to kill a child,

tourists would have to pay extra. After

it was released, the film generated all the shock that one might expect from international audiences who were aware of it and drew intense condemnation from the Republic of Serbs and Bosnian Serb

veterans groups who denied the allegations. Absolutely. All in all

allegations. Absolutely. All in all though, the global reaction at the time was as if the international community had been struck dumb, aligned for the most part in the idea that the allegations and the behaviors described

were horrific, but torn on whether to take it seriously, start up investigations, and reopen this old wound based on the claims of a documentary that lacked the details required for prosecutors to really know

where to begin. All of that changed, however, in the days before this episode was written when a journalist based in Italy, Eierani, submitted a legal complaint to the prosecutor's office in

the city of Milan. For years, after watching the Sievo Safari documentary, Gavazeni had apparently been working in private, collecting evidence, chasing down leads, and dredging up enough information that there might be the

basis for a legal case. Savvo's former

mayor, Benjamina Carrots, pitched in with a report of her own. Carrots is

herself a survivor of the siege and contributed support based on the evidence at her and the city's disposal.

In mid- November, the new legal complaint made headlines when Milan's prosecutor's office opened the first international investigation into sniper safaris in history. That effort will target Italians who are suspected of

having gone to Sievo to participate. And

if possible, it will charge them with a voluntary murder aggravated by cruelty and abject motives.

Now, right now, the investigation in Milan is in its early phases. And

despite the limited documentation that's been shared so far, we've got to be very clear. The allegations that Italians or

clear. The allegations that Italians or other foreigners paid to participate in sniper safaris in Savvo, they are just that, allegations that have yet to be backed up in a court of law. Quite

frankly, as is the case in all investigations, there is a chance that this effort could come to nothing. And

even if it does produce results, that's a process that's only just beginning. So

over the course of today's episode, we won't be able to share specific allegations against specific parties, describe information obtained during the investigative process, or give you even the slightest inkling of how this story

will end. No crystal ball. But what we

will end. No crystal ball. But what we can do is conclude today's episode by detailing some of the most recent claims around these sniper safaris and paint a

general picture of both the people who chose to take part and the atrocities they chose to carry out. While this

first series of investigations targets Italian nationals, people from several wealthier nations are believed to have paid for the privilege of traveling to Bosnia to take part. Those include

people from the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, Canada, and Russia, among other nations. people who the Italian journalist bringing these charges, Eio Gabbazani, described as

quote, "wealthy people with reputations, entrepreneurs, people with a passion for weapons to indulge, who prefer to go to bed with a rifle with money at their disposal and the right contacts of

facilitators between Italy and Serbia.

Some may have been ethnic Serbs, but it appears that at least a subset were not and were instead looking to get involved in the war purely to satisfy some personal desire. In Italy, a nation that

personal desire. In Italy, a nation that shares borders with former Yugoslav territory, Italian and international participants would gather in the city of Trieste in groups arranged by parties who are at least right now still

unknown. From there, typically during

unknown. From there, typically during weekend trips, those people would then be flown on a Serbian airline, Avia Gen X, to the area immediately surrounding Sievo. They would pay Bosnian Serb

Sievo. They would pay Bosnian Serb forces directly at prices equivalent to roughly $116,000 adjusting for inflation. From there, the tourists would have the option to pay

additional prices to kill specific kinds of people with children, as we mentioned before, being the most expensive.

According to Gavazani, elderly people could be killed for free. According to

the Savvo Safari film, those tourists were typically people with some kind of backgrounds in hunting, and they'd typically bring their own weapons to the war zone rather than relying on the kit available to them. Those who didn't have weapons of their own would generally

find a rifle and a vantage point prepared for them. They'd be escorted to snipers nests and during their long weekend they'd be able to shoot civilians, children, rescuers, and any other potential targets at their

leisure, assuming that they continued to pay the corresponding prices. According

to Gabazani, at least 100 people took part in these sniper safaris during the course of the war, although the true total can be considerably higher. And as

Gabzani tells it, these people weren't motivated by any desire to see Bosnian Serbs win or to see sovereign Bosnia lose. Quoting again, there were no

lose. Quoting again, there were no political or religious motivations. They

were rich people who went there for fun and personal satisfaction. We are

talking about people who love guns and perhaps go to shooting ranges or on safari in Africa. End quote. Now,

obviously, if these allegations are accurate, then Bosnian Serb fighters on the ground were aware of what was happening. According to Italian

happening. According to Italian investigators, Serbian intelligence was probably in the loop as well, at least with a passing awareness of the tourist trips and quite possibly facilitating them. The alleged involvement of

them. The alleged involvement of Serbia's state airline carrier is particularly damning since that would imply an awareness of the situation, not just among a small subset of Serbian

intelligence, but shared by a far larger number of people across the state bureaucracy. On the ground, Bosnian Serb

bureaucracy. On the ground, Bosnian Serb fighters reportedly welcomed the activity and worked to facilitate it. in

some cases by providing spotters and security teams. But while it's entirely plausible that they kept the money they collected for themselves, there's no clear indication that the money wasn't funneled along other channels, perhaps

to enrich people higher up the chain of command or perhaps to fund the continuation of the siege itself. The

troops who supposedly helped out participants on the ground were loyal to Radavan Karazich, the president of the Republic of Serka at the time and a man who was known quite accurately as the

butcher of Bosnia. Karedzitch is already spending the rest of his life in prison after having been found guilty of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in 2016. Sadly, some of the details about the parties involved may

never be known. It's been 30 years since the siege of Sievo concluded. Many of

the survivors on all sides have since passed away, and people who were involved with these alleged safaris or worked to facilitate them have had multiple decades to hide or destroy any

evidence of what they've done. Those who

thought they were safe have most likely become aware of the potential for new investigations and they especially people outside Italy will probably have the benefit of years more before investigators ever come sniffing around.

If paying customers are found to have been a part of sniper safaris, they may well face trial for war crimes and could become the first people ever from their respective nations to face a war crimes

tribunal for acts committed as civilians without being part of a formal military at the time of the offense. But as of right now, any such trials are a long way off as the investigation in Italy

moves forward. It'll have to contend

moves forward. It'll have to contend with exceptionally fierce denials from Bosnian Serb veterans and from the government of Republic of Serbska. It'll

have to provide evidence compelling enough to break through opposing evaluations, including from places like Britain, where speaking to the BBC, soldiers who had deployed to Bosnia

during the 1990s described the claims as quote an urban myth and quote logistically difficult to accomplish.

Quite frankly, these investigations will have to push against the sheer inertia that comes from three decades of inaction and three decades in which the world has hoped that perhaps these

sniper safaris really were a mere legend. In fairness, it's entirely

legend. In fairness, it's entirely understandable to hope that nothing like this ever happened. We here at Warfronts sincerely hope that thorough international investigations can produce some kind of conclusive evidence that

can put this to rest and establish that if nothing else there's at least one circle of hell that modern humanity hadn't yet visited. But to simply suppose that these snipers of Aries never happened. To brush those

never happened. To brush those allegations away like the international community has done for decades has always been a disservice both to those who survived the siege and those who

didn't make it out. To find these sniper safaris didn't happen would be welcome news, but failure to pursue the truth, whatever it may be, has always been a travesty.