Witness to alleged human safari hunters who 'wanted to kill prettiest and pregnant women' was given severe warning
Another journalist has joined the fight to expose the horrific human safaris that allegedly occurred during the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s.
There have long been rumours of wealthy tourists visiting Bosnia and Herzegovina during the almost four-year siege of the capital city in order to take shots at civilians, with thousands of non-military personnel shot dead while they walked through the streets of the city.
However, more evidence surfaced at the end of 2025 when Italian reporter Ezio Gavazzeni described more about the 'manhunt' which allegedly saw rich people pay huge sums for the opportunity to shoot and kill innocent civilians from Serbian shooting spots during the siege.
And now a new book by Croatian journalist Domagoj Margetic has added more fuel to the fire after he shared shocking details of how the sniper tourists would have competitions to kill attractive and pregnant women, paying ridiculous sums for the disturbing opportunity.
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Margetic, who also suggested that a European royal was involved in the appalling actions, has mirrored the claims of former US marine John Jordan who testified at The Hague in 2007.
In his statement, he said: "If an adult and child were walking together, the child would be shot. If a family was walking, it would be the youngest. In a crowd of girls, it seemed that the most attractive would be shot.
"I had witnessed on more than one occasion personnel who did not appear to me to be locals by their dress, by the weapons they carried, by the way they were being handled, i.e., guided around by the locals."
Although Jordan suggested that he never actually saw one of these tourists take a shot, his allegations now appear to have more weight behind them, given the claims of Gavazzeni and Margetic.
'The price was higher for a child'
In a 2022 documentary Sarajevo Safari, an anonymous Slovenian man, who worked as an intelligence officer and visited Sarajevo over 30 times in the 90s, shared his memories of the reported sniper tourists, as well as the severe warning that he was given.
The Serbian military allegedly made it clear he should 'never repeat' the things he saw, which might explain why the horrors of the 'human safaris' were kept more or less secret for almost three decades, but he has since gone on to share more about the 'dark side' of the war.
He said: "These people were certainly not ordinary people. They were people in high positions, protected... people who, after having everything, seek another thrill, saying to themselves: 'Why shouldn't I now shoot a child or an adult in Sarajevo and gain another pleasure? I won't only kill animals'.
"I never heard the prices. I only know it was terribly expensive, and that the price was higher for a child."
After he was escorted by the military onto one of these safaris, which he refused to take part in, the anonymous man said it was immediately obvious that some of the men there were 'from the West'.
He added: "They told me they would show me the close positions of their soldiers.
"There I saw three gentlemen whose faces immediately told me they were not from Bosnia, not Serbs, not Montenegrins, they had to be from the West.
"One of them even looked Russian. I can tell by the face. They were prepared: you could see something was about to happen. I thought they were foreign journalists... Then I connected the dots. These men couldn't wait to come and do something."
A timeline of the Sarajevo 'human safari' allegations
5 April 1992
The Siege of Sarajevo begins. For almost four years, the 400,000 inhabitants of the city suffer from shelling and snipers, with many cut off from food, water, medicine and electricity.
Late 1993
Bosnian military intelligence officer Edin Subasic comes across testimony from a Serbian volunteer. He later tells El Pais the man spoke about seeing ‘five Italians who had hunting equipment and expensive weapons’ who described themselves as ‘hunters who paid Serbs in Sarajevo to shoot people in the city’.
29 February 1996
The Siege of Sarajevo ends.
2007
Former US Marine John Jordan testifies to the International Criminal Court about ‘tourist shooters’. He said: “I never saw one of these tourist shooters take a shot. I just saw them being handled and moved around known sniper positions.
"It was clearly obvious that the person being led by men who were familiar with the ground was completely unfamiliar with the ground, and his manner of dress and the weapons they carried led me to believe they were tourist shooters.”
2014
Luca Leone writes in his book The B***ards of Sarajevo of European tourists paying at checkpoints managed by Serbian paramilitaries in Croatia and Bosnia to shoot civilians in Sarajevo.
2022
The documentary Sarajevo Safari by Slovenian director Miran Zupanic further drags the murky details of the alleged human safaris into the public eye.
The film includes testimony from Subasic and an unnamed Slovenian source who worked for ‘an important American agency’. The latter claims in the film to have seen ‘how, for certain sums of money, strangers would come in to shoot at the surrounded citizens of Sarajevo’.
November 2025
The public prosecutor's office in Milan opens an investigation into claims Italian citizens were involved in the ‘human safaris’, after journalist and author Ezio Gavazzeni filed a legal complaint.
Meanwhile, US congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna says she has opened her own investigation and vows: “If there are any Americans who have engaged in this, they deserve to be charged and prosecuted.”
February 2026
An 80-year-old Italian truck driver allegedly becomes the first suspect investigated over the ‘human safaris’.
James Moorhouse