Journalists aiming to expose the horrific war crimes that were committed during the brutal four-year siege of Sarajevo have now claimed that a European royal was involved.
The shocking claim that Italian and other European citizens travelled to Bosnia during the 90s to take part in 'sniper safaris' first surfaced at the end of last year thanks to journalist and novelist Ezio Gavazzeni.
He suggests that wealthy people would pay large sums for the opportunity to shoot and kill defenceless citizens alongside Serbian snipers during the siege, which saw over 11,000 people killed.
Italian officers were investigating the claims made by Gavazzeni, but now a new book, Pay and Shoot, by the Croatian journalist Domagoj Margetic has gone a step further by sharing more details of the safaris and alleging that a member of a European royal family even took part.
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Margetic suggested that he was given documents by Bosnian intelligence officer Nedzad Ugljen before he was shot dead in 1996.
The documents claimed that the disturbed visitors would pay 80,000 marks, which was around £35k at the time, to their Serbian handlers for the opportunity to kill middle-aged men or women, while it would cost 95,000 to shoot young women and 110,000 to shoot pregnant women.
The shooters would allegedly take shots from a vantage point above 'sniper alley', which was an extremely dangerous place for citizens to pass through.
“Ugljen also wrote the foreigners competed to see who could shoot the most beautiful women,” Margetic told the Times.
The journalist also suggests in the book that he had the opportunity to interview several members of the Bosnian-Serbian militia who acted as hosts for the visiting shooters.
“Many of them told me a European royal was among the shooters. He would arrive by helicopter, stay in Vogosca near Sarajevo and wanted to shoot at children,” he said.
Unlike Gavazzeni, who claimed that it originated in Italy, Margetic suggests that had involved Croatian man Zvonko Horvatincic, who had worked for Yugoslav intelligence.
“He told me he had arranged animal hunting trips for wealthy foreigners in Croatia before the war. It was an activity handled by the security services because foreigners were involved,” he said. “When the siege of Sarajevo got underway, rich Italians asked him in the summer of 1992 if they could go there.”
Margetic also managed to speak with former Croatian prime minister Josip Manolic, who reportedly provided details of exactly how the foreign shooters would travel to Sarajevo.
“Manolic told me he was also getting reports of the foreigners meeting in a hotel in Jastrebarsko near Zagreb before heading for Sarajevo,” he said. The route from Croatia was used alongside the route into Bosnia from Belgrade, Margetic said.
“Manolic said Croatia’s then president, Franjo Tudman, was happy to see the Sarajevo siege continue because he believed it would weaken the Serbs.”
Topics: Royal Family
James Moorhouse