Two days ago, the German newspaper Frankfurter Sonntagszeitung published an article with new details about the “Sarajevo Safari” and parts of an interview with Italian journalist and writer Ezio Gavazzeni.
The article opens with the testimony of former US Marine and firefighter John Jordan, who first spoke about the so-called “sniper tourists” before the Hague Tribunal in February 2007. The transcript of his interrogation is still publicly available today. According to the German newspaper Frankfurter Sonntagszeitung (FAS), Jordan repeatedly noticed groups of men in Sarajevo whose appearance, behavior and weapons immediately intrigued him. They were led by local people, and some of them carried rifles that looked more like equipment for hunting wild boars in the Black Forest than weapons for urban warfare. It was obvious that they were having a hard time finding their way around the ruins of war-torn Sarajevo. A colleague from Mostar confirmed the same.
“After Jordan’s testimony about ‘tourist snipers’, nothing happened,” writes FAS, recalling that stories about Canadians, Russians, Germans, Swiss and Italians – who allegedly came to Sarajevo and paid huge sums to Serbian paramilitary formations to ‘hunt people’ – have long been considered urban legends.
“Excursions” continued in 1994 and 1995
The German newspaper then takes a look at the file that Italian journalist Ezio Gavazzeni, together with lawyer Nicolo Brigida and former judge Guido Salvini, handed over to the State Attorney’s Office in Milan on January 28, 2025. FAS had access to the document.
The file states that at least one hundred so-called “war tourists”, who called each other “shooters” – although, as the paper writes, a more accurate term would be “serial killers”. According to reports, these “tourists” allegedly paid up to 300,000 euros in today’s equivalent. “Children cost the most, then men – preferably uniformed and armed – then women, while the elderly could be killed for free,” the file says.
The document claims that the Italian military intelligence service was aware of the phenomenon as early as 1993 and that a few months later it announced how it had identified the starting points of those tours and stopped them. But Gavazzeni claims the opposite today: “We know that’s not true. The trips to the front continued in 1994 and 1995,” he said last week in Milan.
Gavazzeni, author of books about the assassinations of anti-Mafia judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino and the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, is publishing a new book in February, I cecchini del weekend (“The Weekend Snipers”). Netflix and Amazon have already expressed interest in adapting it for the screen, and Paper First is publishing it.
The scariest “trophy”
What shocked him the most was the realization that killing children was the most sought-after “trophy”. FAS reminds that during the siege of Sarajevo, from April 6, 1992 to February 29, 1996, 11,541 people were killed, among them 1,601 children. Almost every family in Sarajevo lost someone to snipers or grenades. The city was surrounded by mountains over two thousand meters high, from which the snipers had a view over the streets, squares and apartments. Shooting was also done from skyscrapers, especially along the notorious “Sniper Alley”. Citizens ran along the walls for water and food, hiding behind UN armored vehicles.
Profile of “hunters”: well-to-do, educated, eager for adrenaline
Gavazzeni hired criminologist Martina Radica to create a profile of the perpetrator. According to her analysis, “man hunters” were mostly from the upper social strata – doctors, judges, lawyers, notaries, entrepreneurs – accustomed to hunting and luxury. “Everything was based on the search for adrenaline. It was the joy of killing; once you feel the power to end the life of a man with whom you have nothing in common,” said Gavazzeni.
He also points out that the information that right-wing ideology was behind everything is wrong. “It’s misinformation. Political belief played no part.”
When asked if he had spoken to people who saw the foreigners shooting, he replied: “Yes.”
From thriller to investigation
He heard about “war tourists” for the first time in 1995 in Corriere della Sera and thought about the topic for years. He tried to write a thriller, but soon realized that he didn’t know enough and gave up. Everything changed after the release of the documentary Sarajevo Safari by Slovenian director Miran Zupanič in 2022. Zupanič sent him the materials and Gavazzeni got in touch with the former operative of the intelligence service of Bosnia and Herzegovina Edin Subašić. Their e-mail correspondence became a key part of the file.
In an e-mail from November 2024, Subašić stated that at the end of 1993, during the interrogation of a captured Serbian volunteer, he found out about a group of five foreigners who arrived in Sarajevo from Belgrade. At least three, according to those statements, were Italians. They gathered in Trieste, flew to Belgrade, and from there were transferred to Mostar or Sarajevo. Subasic also claimed that Italy’s SIMSI intelligence service – disbanded in 2007 – falsely claimed that the tours had been stopped.
New statements, new accusations
In the meantime, other witnesses are appearing in the Italian media. Diplomat Michael Giffoni, then in Sarajevo, said that in 1994 he heard that “buses full of rich people from all over the world – hunters and businessmen – were arriving.” A former Caritas associate also claims to have seen luxuriously dressed foreigners with weapons getting off the bus. Croatian journalist Domagoj Margetić went the furthest, claiming that even then 20-year-old Aleksandar Vučić, when he was a volunteer at positions around the Jewish cemetery, “collaborated with paying tourists.” Vučić’s spokeswoman categorically rejected those allegations.
The investigation in Milan and the possible “process of the century”
Now it is up to the State Attorney’s Office in Milan to clarify all allegations. The interrogations have already begun, and the Five Star Movement has requested that Italian intelligence documents on the “Sarajevo Safaris” be made public.
Gavazzeni previously had access to the archives of the DIGOS special unit for the book on the assassination of the Pope. He tried to find documents from the archives in Trieste and Gorizia that would refer to the passage of “hunting groups”, but he was told that the material from that period no longer exists. FAS asks the question: how is it possible that the archive in Rome preserves everything, while the archives from the key transit points of the war trade in people, weapons and drugs – are empty?
“Some things sound like a conspiracy theory or the plot of a thriller,” writes FAS. Gavazzeni says he expected threats, but since they didn’t appear, “it’s not a good sign; I think someone is waiting to see what the book reveals.”
He also submitted to the Milan prosecutor’s office a list of people he identified as participants in the safari, but their names will not be published in the book.
If the investigation confirms his conclusions and at least one participant is brought to justice, FAS writes that it could be the “trial of the century.” “The clues were there all along – they just needed to be connected,” the German newspaper concludes, adding that Gavazzeni compiled his dossier in a shopping mall café, piecing together clues that had gone unnoticed for years.
