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Rich foreigners paid large sums of money to shoot terrified civilians during the 1990s siege Of sarajevoAccording to the extraordinary allegations, they are being investigated by Italian prosecutors.
Prosecutors are investigating allegations that far-right extremists and gun enthusiasts from Italy, the United States, Russia and other countries had traveled bosnia and paid the Serbian army to shoot at town residents as “war tourism”.
according to RepublicForeigners paid the modern-day equivalent of between €80,000 and €100,000 each to participate, with a “price list” reportedly listing different rates depending on the goal.
,[There was] There is a price tag for these killings: children cost the most, then men, preferably in uniform and armed, women and finally old people, who can be killed for free,” Ezio Gavazeni, a journalist, told the Italian newspaper.
He added, “They left Trieste for the search. And then they came home and continued their normal lives. In the opinion of those who knew them, they were respectable.”
The case was filed “against unknown persons” by Benjamina Caric, former mayor of Bosnia and Herzegovina. “A whole team of tireless people is fighting to get this complaint heard,” he told Italy. ansa News agency.
Investigators are working with the Ragruppamento Operativo Speciale, the Carabinieri unit that handles terrorism and organized crime, and prosecutors want to identify any Italians who took part to face charges of “brutality and voluntary manslaughter motivated by despicable motives.”
Witnesses say the trips were arranged from the north-eastern city of Trieste. Participants were reportedly taken sniper Positions in the hills overlooking Zaragoza held by Bosnian Serb militia Radovan KaradzicWho was later convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity. Serbia has denied any role in the alleged killings, but investigators believe Serbian intelligence services knew about, or were involved in, the operation.
Former Bosnian intelligence officer Edin Subašić said that a captured Serb soldier told him that the Italians had paid him to fire sniper rifles at civilians.
John Jordan, a former US Marine, testified to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2007 that “tourist shooters” came to Zaragoza to open fire on civilians for their own satisfaction. He said one man brought a hunting rifle that was “more suitable for wild boar than urban warfare” and he handled it “like a novice.”
The siege of Yugoslavia was the longest siege in modern European history, killing more than 11,500 people.
The Italian intelligence agency SISMI reportedly confirmed at the time that foreign “weekend snipers” had visited Sarajevo.
British journalist and Balkan expert Tim Judah said allegations were possible but limited in terms of the number of people participating.
“From 1992 to 1995, I spent a lot of time in Pale, which was the headquarters of the Bosnian Serb forces, and I didn’t hear about it,” he reported. Wire“I’m not saying it didn’t happen, It’s possible that there were people who were willing to pay to do it, But I don’t think the number would have been very large,”
One known case involved Russian nationalist Eduard Limonov, who was filmed in 1992 opening fire on Karadzic over Sarajev. Limonov died in Moscow in 2020.