ROME: Italian prosecutors are investigating whether snipers paid the Bosnian Serb army during the 1990s siege of Sarajevo to be allowed to shoot civilians for sport.
According to La Repubblica daily, the investigation opened by Milan prosecutor Alessandro Gobbis for voluntary manslaughter seeks to identify Italians who may have “paid to play war and kill defenceless civilians for fun”.
The newspaper said the unidentified suspects, or “war tourists”, were mostly wealthy and gun-loving right-wing sympathisers, who departed from Trieste, in northern Italy, before being taken to the hills surrounding Sarajevo.
There, the would-be snipers paid up to the equivalent of 100,000 euros per day to the Serb forces to shoot at civilians below them, according to the daily Il Giornale, the first newspaper to report, in July, that an investigation had been opened.
The investigation follows a complaint filed by Italian journalist and writer Ezio Gavanezzi, who was contacted in August this year by the former mayor of Sarajevo, Benjamina Karic.
She had filed her own complaint in Bosnia in 2022 after the broadcast of a documentary, Sarajevo Safari by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic, which revealed the crimes.
In an interview with La Repubblica, Gavanezzi estimated there were at least 100 Italians who participated, with Il Giornale citing at least double that _ on top of foreigners from other countries.
On social media, Karic said she welcomed the Italian investigation.
In her 2022 complaint, a copy of which she posted on social media, Karic said the documentary, along with witness statements, point to “reasonable suspicion” that members of the Bosnian Serb army “organised excursions” for wealthy foreigners”.
Published in Dawn, November 14th, 2025
