Bosnians who raised alarm about ‘human safaris’ in Sarajevo: ‘The most shocking thing was each victim had a price’

Edin Subasic, a 62-year-old Bosnian retiree, is currently one of the most sought-after individuals by the international press. His testimony could prove crucial in determining whether the so-called “human safaris” — supposedly perpetrated in the 1990s during the siege of Sarajevo, at the height of the Balkan Wars — actually took place. In other words, whether Italian civilians traveled to the front lines on weekends to — for a fee — kill people who endured the longest military siege of a capital city in modern history (1992-1996). His words are of vital importance to the investigation launched last week by the Milan Prosecutor’s Office.

Both Subasic and Benjamina Karic, a former first councilor for the Novo Sarajevo district and mayor of the Bosnian capital from 2021 to 2024, shared details of what they know about the matter via email and WhatsApp. Both are confident that justice will be served, although neither has yet been summoned by the judicial authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Italy, or the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

Subasic was a literature professor who worked as a journalist in his country. At the start of the war in 1992, he joined the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) and soon became part of the Military Intelligence Service. He was working there when he heard about the “human safaris.” “What shocked me most was that the snipers on the safari chose whether they wanted to kill an adult civilian, a woman, a child, a pregnant woman, a soldier… And everything had its price! Macabre and sickening.”

In late 1993, General Mustafa Hajrulahovic, head of the Military Intelligence Service (who died in 1999), assigned Subasic the task of analyzing the data obtained from interrogations of Serbian prisoners. There he found the testimony of a volunteer: “He was a young man of about 20, originally from the city of Paracin, in Serbia. He got lost in the urban area of the front, looted abandoned houses, and entered the area controlled by the ARBiH, where he was captured.”

When questioned about how he arrived at the front, the number of volunteers from Serbia, and the type of weapons they had, the prisoner stated that he had arrived by bus with a group of Serbs and another group of foreigners, “five Italians who had hunting equipment and expensive weapons.”

“He spoke with one of them, who was from Milan. He told him that they weren’t paid mercenaries, but hunters who paid Serbs in Sarajevo to shoot people in the city,” Subasic emphasizes. “It was a surprise to him too, which is why he mentioned it immediately! It was the first time I’d ever heard of anything like that.”

The prisoner was interrogated twice, according to Subasic. “We learned that the Italians got off the bus in Pale (a small town about 10 miles from Sarajevo), where military special forces with jeeps were waiting for them.” Subasic prepared an analysis and presented it to his superiors; then, the head of intelligence contacted officers from SISMI (the former Italian intelligence agency) stationed with the UN peacekeeping force (UNPROFOR), and informed them of what had happened. “We demanded that they verify it and take action in Italy.”

Subasic adds that, in early 1994 — between March and April — during a briefing, the head of the Service informed him that SISMI had confirmed the prisoner’s information. The Italian agency reported that the location from which the groups departed had been identified and that this activity had been neutralized and would not be repeated. “SISMI’s response confirmed that the prisoner’s information was correct. The Service then considered the case closed, resolved, and focused on other issues, as that was the most difficult year of the war.”

The former intelligence agent recounts that, according to the Serbian prisoner’s testimony, the “hunter-snipers” used combined transport: “They traveled by plane from Italy to Hungary and then overland to Belgrade. From Belgrade they went by bus or helicopter to Pale, and from there to Sarajevo. Their guides on the front lines were Serbian army special forces.”

Although there was a formal ban on civilian air traffic, he explains, snipers often took advantage of humanitarian flights to Serbia. “Furthermore, helicopter transport to Bosnia [Pale] was carried out by Serbian military helicopters, violating the flight ban. That ban was violated throughout the war. All sides did it. I myself flew on ARBiH helicopters during the war. We risked NATO airstrikes.”

The former military officer maintains that the human safaris could only have been organized with a “highly professional structure,” and that “the core of that group consisted of members of the Serbian security service.” The modus operandi — from transportation to infiltration of the front lines — demanded such a level of coordination and secrecy that, according to him, only a “powerful” service with authority in Serbia and among Bosnian Serbs could have been behind the operation.

Subasic recounted his experience in the documentary Sarajevo Safari, broadcast in 2022 by Al Jazeera Balkans, a channel that was shut down last July. He was also contacted by the Italian journalist and writer Ezio Gavazzeni, who has investigated the matter for years and filed a 17-page complaint with the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office. “I know that Gavazzeni’s investigation has led to some names of snipers. Now it’s best to keep any new information secret so as not to hinder” the investigation, he says.

Benjamina Karic, who lived through the siege as a child in the Grbavica neighborhood — the area most heavily targeted by snipers — felt “a profound moral, human, and official obligation to act” after watching the documentary. She had studied law and was serving as mayor of the capital of this country of 3.4 million inhabitants at the time. “I filed a criminal complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina against the unknown perpetrators who killed my fellow citizens, in the Special Department for War Crimes.”

Later, Karic expanded her complaint with the testimony of John Jordan, an American with UNPROFOR, who served in the fire brigade in Sarajevo during the war and “witnessed the arrival of the hunters.” “His testimony had already been accepted as evidence in the trials of Serbian generals Svetozar Galić and Dragomir Milosevic before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. I attached this evidence to the complaint filed with the Prosecutor’s Office, as it can be used in two separate proceedings.”

Karic indicates that the case is still being processed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office. She adds that several of her urgent requests have yielded no results in expediting the proceedings. For his part, Subasic states that, although he is a potential witness, he has never been summoned to testify by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in his country following Karic’s complaint. “I am waiting for the summons. I have made everything I know available to the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office, through Ezio Gavazzeni. I also expect an invitation to testify in the investigation in Milan. I want to believe that justice, however slow, will finally reach the murderers and organizers.”

Public pressure

The former Bosnian intelligence officer concludes: “I hope that public pressure in Bosnia will compel the Prosecutor’s Office to actively pursue this case. Documents about it exist in the SISMI archives and the Bosnian military archives. The aforementioned report of the prisoner’s interrogation and my analysis are there. After 30 years, I don’t recall the soldier’s name, but everything is in the archives, and the Prosecutor’s Office can obtain it.”

Karic is also optimistic: “I firmly believe that justice will ultimately be served. If I didn’t have that conviction, I wouldn’t have undertaken this fight.”

Dzemil Hodzic, a Sarajevo-based video editor for Al Jazeera, saw his 16-year-old brother killed by a sniper when he was nine. Now 42, he’s working on a series of interviews titled “Sniper Alley Photo,” available on YouTube, in which he interviews photographers who covered the war. In the video featuring Italian photojournalist Mario Boccia, he recounts (8:56): “This place brings back particular memories. Memories of foreigners who came here to watch the fighting. At a base in the Grbavica neighborhood, I met a guy who came from Greece, a young man who came to fight in the name of Orthodox solidarity. Another guy came from New York. He was of Serbian descent. I also have photos of Russians who fought alongside the Serbs in Trebinje.”

None of them, however, paid to kill. Boccia had no knowledge of that kind of tourism. But Hodzic has no doubt that it existed. “For us survivors, the weekends were the worst. It seemed like they would arrive and go crazy and cross the line. If they were paying to do it, it all makes more sense.”

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