Adnan Popovac was not yet six years old when, in Hrasnica near Sarajevo, in September 1994, he was killed by a sniper’s bullet fired from the positions of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS).
The brutal killings of civilians, especially children, during the siege of Sarajevo are once again in focus after reports by Italian media that the Prosecutor’s Office in Milan has launched an investigation into the so-called “weekend snipers”, a case better known as the “Sarajevo safari”.
The investigation is being conducted against unknown perpetrators, referring to alleged sniper tourists who, during the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the 1990s, paid tens of thousands of dollars to shoot at innocent civilians of besieged Sarajevo, Italian media reported. The investigation was launched following a complaint submitted by journalist and writer Ezio Gavazzeni and former judge Guido Salvini.
For Fatima Popovac, the mother of little Adnan, remembering the moment when her son was brutally killed 31 years ago opens a wound that has never healed. She remembers how, on that fateful September morning, her sister Munira took Adnan and his younger sister Arnela to a local shop in Hrasnica, wanting to treat them to something sweet during a lull in the shelling. The girl was in her arms, and she was holding little Adnan by the hand.
“Just after she left, it seems to me that a bullet flew past my ear. I entered the house for a moment and heard a shot. My husband stayed in the yard, and when I went out, I saw he wasn’t there. Silence… People were hiding behind corners, and shots were still being fired. I called my husband, but he wasn’t there. I heard a neighbor saying that Dado was wounded. I said: ‘It’s not Dado, that’s my Ado,'” Popovac recalls.
The deadly sniper bullet, fired from the direction of the Vojkovici neighborhood, which was under VRS control, struck the boy under his right eye while his aunt held him by the hand.
Adnan was a wonderful, intelligent child, says the tearful mother as she shows his name engraved on the Memorial to the murdered children of besieged Sarajevo. Eyes full of tears as she recites Al-Fatiha for him confirms that a mother’s pain has never ceased, nor will it.
“My little girl and sister survived. Allah rewarded me with a son; today I have a son, a daughter, and two grandchildren. Praise be to Allah, I hope for God’s mercy and that my Adnan is waiting for his mother in heaven,” says Fatima.
Asked how she reacts to the story of “weekend killers” who paid to kill civilians during the siege of Sarajevo, now being brought up again, Popovac replies that she cannot comprehend what kind of people they are.
“Why are they hiding those monsters? Whose interest is it to keep that from being revealed? Those are our prosecutors and global power-holders who came to kill us. The one who allowed it and the one who did it need to be punished. My Adnan was killed while my sister held him by the hand and the little girl in her arms. A male child was targeted,” says Popovac.
When asked whether, as a mother, she wonders if it is possible that someone killed her child “for fun”, she replies:
“Of course, I wonder. I cannot imagine that someone in human form could do that. I would like to see that monster, what he looks like, what he resembles, whether he has anything human in him? To kill someone’s child… What is a six-year-old child guilty of? To kill someone’s child for fun is incomprehensible to me. No one can explain that to me.”
The news that prosecutors in Italy have launched an investigation into the “Sarajevo safari” case nevertheless represents a glimmer of hope for her.
“We place our trust in Allah above all. But there are some indications that some good people have started investigating. We hope Allah will open the way for them to find out who those people among us are. For someone’s entertainment to be killing a child – that is beyond reason. My mind cannot grasp it,” says Popovac.
“When I see someone else’s child fall and get hurt, my heart aches. I would like the truth to come out, for those monsters to be uncovered. I do not hate anyone. I could not harm anyone, not even the one who killed my child. I don’t have that kind of soul.”
She concludes: “What keeps me going in life is that we will all come before God and that the truth will one day come out, in this world or the next. Still, I would like the criminals to answer before the judiciary as well.”
At the AJB DOC festival in 2022, the documentary film “Sarajevo Safari” by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic, produced by Al Jazeera Balkans and Arsmedia, was shown, and the story of “weekend snipers” in besieged Sarajevo once again resurfaced in public.
The siege of Sarajevo began on April 5th, 1992, and ended on February 29th, 1996. It lasted 1.425 days. It is estimated that around 500.000 projectiles were fired at the city during the siege. An average of 329 shells were fired at the city daily.
During that time, about 350.000 residents were exposed to daily fire from members of the former Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and paramilitary formations, and later members of the then VRS, from almost all types of weapons, from positions located on the surrounding hills.
During the siege, 11.541 citizens of Sarajevo were killed, among them 1.601 children. According to post-war research, most of the residents, nearly four-fifths of the total number of those killed, died in the first two years of the war.
For terrorizing civilians during the siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995, among others, the Appeals Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals sentenced wartime commander of the VRS Ratko Mladic and wartime president of the RS Radovan Karadzic to life imprisonment. The Hague Tribunal sentenced the commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the VRS, Stanislav Galic, to life imprisonment for keeping Sarajevo under siege, and Dragomir Milosevic and Momcilo Perisic, also high VRS officers, were convicted as well, AA writes.
