It sounds like a sick movie. Rich tourists paying to shoot humans. But Italian prosecutors chasing the ghosts of Sarajevo’s “sniper tourism” are hitting a wall. They simply do not have the goods. According to an insider, the current evidence is too thin to drag anyone to court.
Five people are in the crosshairs. Milanese investigators are looking into claims that wealthy foreigners bought their way onto the frontlines of the 1992-95 Bosnian war just to take potshots at trapped civilians. The probe kicked off last year. It started when writer Ezio Gavazzeni filed a formal complaint detailing these horrific, decades-old safari rumors.
One suspect is a blue-blooded Milanese aristocrat. He allegedly bragged about his human hunting trips during a school reunion dinner. Talk is cheap. Proving it is another story. Right now, the state has nothing but hearsay and circumstantial scraps. “To be blunt, they couldn’t indict a single one of them today,” the source admitted.
They need help. Fast. Milan prosecutors Alessandro Gobbis and Marcello Viola are heading to Luxembourg on June 29. They will huddle with Belgian and Bosnian officials at Eurojust. The goal? Shake loose some fresh leads. Without international cooperation, this case dies.
Some moves are being made. Police recently tossed the home of a 66-year-old retired bureaucrat in Alessandria. He kept his mouth shut during earlier questioning. But his ex-girlfriend spilled. She told cops he was plagued by nightmares about his actions three decades ago. The raid turned up a silencer and a snapshot of a sniper rifle.
It is a grim puzzle. Meanwhile, the hunt for a shadowy Milanese travel agency that allegedly brokered these murder vacations has turned up absolutely nothing. Over 11,000 civilians died in Sarajevo under the siege of Bosnian Serb forces. If wealthy tourists really paid to join the slaughter, the truth remains buried deep in the mud of Bosnia.
