Prosecutors in Croatia have opened an investigation into tourists who are accused of joining a ‘human safari’ to shoot and kill innocent Bosnians.
During the Siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s, European tourists have been accused of paying to shoot at innocent civilians in the war-torn city.
In November, investigators in Milan opened an investigation into Italian tourists who allegedly paid £70,000 to join the sickening ‘safari’, and now two people in Croatia are also under investigation.
The country’s justice ministry said: ‘An investigation was opened on April 25 against an Austrian citizen and another as-yet-unidentified individual in connection with possible participation in so-called ‘sniper tours’ in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War.’
Last month, further allegations of Croatian involvement emerged when journalist Domagoj Margetic released an interview with a former Bosnian Serb army major.
In the interview, he claimed an Austrian came in late 1992 and 1993 and went by the name ‘Grof’ with the Serbs, and gave his name as ‘Sebastian’.
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‘I have also been told that Serbian soldiers at Sarajevo checkpoints remember hunters showing Austrian passports,’ the commander claimed.
Italian, Croatian, British, French, Spanish, Russian and German nationals have been accused of attending the ‘tours’.
Alma Zadic, a Bosnian-born member of the Austrian Green Party and the former justice minister, said of the new allegations: ‘The idea that people may have paid money to deliberately shoot at civilians — even children — is almost unimaginable in its cruelty.
‘Such acts represent a level of contempt for humanity that leaves one speechless. The victims and their relatives have a right to truth, justice and clarification.’
The shooting in the city was so bad that two main streets, Ulica Zmaja od Bosne and Meša Selimović Boulevard, were dubbed ‘sniper alley’.
During the siege, Sarajevo’s electric, gas and water supplies were cut off – leaving those within the city with no access to vital infrastructure.
Former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and the commander of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Sarajevo-Romanija Corps, Stanislav Galic, were both found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Hague over the attack.
Both were eventually handed sentences of life imprisonment. Karadzic is serving his sentence in the UK, while Galic was taken to Germany.
The siege ended in 1995, leaving 13,952 people dead. 5,434 of these casualties were civilians.
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