Royal allegedly joined human safari hunters who ‘competed to kill prettiest and pregnant women’
Journalists aiming to expose the horrific war crimes that were committed during the brutal almost 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 alleged safaris and alleging that a member of a European royal family even took part.
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Margetic claims 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 marks (£42k) to shoot young women and 110,000 marks (£49k) 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.
Margetic suggests Croatian man Zvonko Horvatincic, who had worked for Yugoslav intelligence, was involved in organising the horrific shooting parties.
“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.”
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 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.
"I never actually saw one take a shot. But, again, 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’, and is said to be investigated over charges of aggravated murder
Topics: Royal Family
James Moorhouse