Italy probes if ‘war tourists’ paid to kill civilians for sport in Sarajevo siege
Wealthy would-be snipers are alleged to have paid six-figure sums to shoot precision rifles from Bosnian Serb army positions
Prosecutors in Italy are investigating possible Italian snipers who may have paid the Bosnian Serb army during the 1990s siege of Sarajevo to be allowed to shoot civilians for sport, local media reported.
According to La Repubblica daily, the investigation opened by Milan prosecutor Alessandro Gobbis for voluntary manslaughter seeks to identify Italians who between 1993 and 1995 may have “paid to play war and kill defenceless civilians ‘for fun’”.
The newspaper said the unidentified suspects it dubbed “war tourists” were mostly wealthy and gun-loving right-wing sympathisers, who departed from Trieste, in northern Italy, before being taken to the hills surrounding Sarajevo.
There, the would-be snipers paid up to the equivalent of €100,000 per day to the Bosnian Serb forces to shoot at civilians below them, according to the daily Il Giornale, the first newspaper to report, in July, that an investigation in Italy had been opened.
The investigation follows a complaint filed by Italian journalist and writer Ezio Gavanezzi, who was contacted in August 2025 by the former mayor of Sarajevo, Benjamina Karic.