Chilling new alleged details revealed about ‘human safaris’ who paid to kill women and children
Another haunting detail has emerged from the alleged 'human safaris' that took place in Sarajevo during the 1990s.
The capital city of Bosnia and Herzegovina was besieged during the Bosnian War in and horrific war crimes are alleged to have happened there.
Sarajevo Safari, a documentary released in 2022, claimed that rich and powerful people paid up to £70,000 to travel to the war zone and shoot at innocent civilians.
It has now emerged that the rich hunters who shot women and children used the code word 'deer' to reference their human prey, according to a witness.
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The Times reports that an unnamed owner of a bed and breakfast in Trieste, Italy, is the latest witness to come forward with allegations against the alleged hunters.
She claims she housed hunters, who were 'rich and arrogant', as they travelled to Sarajevo.
More than 10,000 were killed in Sarajevo during the war
Between 1992 and 1996, more than 10,000 people were killed by snipers and shelling in Sarajevo.
The 'human hunters' allegedly paid more to shoot children and pregnant women, and reportedly met with Serbian militants at the vantage point of Sarajevo's Jewish cemetery to take part in their twisted sport.
The innkeeper from Trieste made her allegations during a meeting with author Guido Salvini, who is looking for new witnesses in his role as a civil plaintiff for the city of Sarajevo, according to author Ezio Gavazzeni, who has written a book on the horrors.
Gavazzeni told The Times on the witness: “She was working at the B&B in the early nineties and was used to hunters passing through to Slovenia and Croatia who knew what animals to hunt in which seasons."
“Then she started to see rich and arrogant hunters arrive with expensive clothes, watches and rifles who knew little about hunting. They said to her they would hunt deer, but she knew it was the wrong season, then realised ‘deer’ was a code for humans as they revealed they were planning to shoot women and kids in Sarajevo.
“She said the hunters travelled with guides who never spoke to her and did not eat with the group.”
It's said the women claimed she reported the hunters to the police at the time.
Hunters wereallegedly given assistance
A former Serbian tank unit volunteer, Aleksandar Licanin, came forward in June and alleged that hunters were given assistance in their hunt for victims and wore expensive clothes while doing it.
"They wore expensive leather jackets and I was told they were Italians, Germans and British," he told The Times.
“They were helped to find targets, and shooting from the cemetery was a clear shot — you had everything.”
Magistrates have opened an investigation into the shootings, with a parallel investigation being launched in Austria, with magistrates from across Europe meeting in June to coordinate their enquiries.
The new details come as The “Butcher of Bosnia”, Ratko Mladić, died in prison aged 83 on August 27.
The Bosnian Serb general was in The Hague serving a life sentence for genocide due to his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
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 País 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’.
Topics: World News, Crime
Daniel Murphy