{"id":25509,"date":"2026-06-17T23:53:27","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T23:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/25509\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T23:53:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T23:53:27","slug":"italian-nobleman-investigated-over-human-safari-killings-in-sarajevo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/25509\/","title":{"rendered":"Italian nobleman investigated over \u2018human safari\u2019 killings in Sarajevo"},"content":{"rendered":"

An Italian nobleman is one of several people being investigated over the killing of civilians in \u201chuman safaris\u201d in Sarajevo during the Bosnian<\/a> war.<\/p>\n

The unnamed aristocrat from Milan \u2013 who has not been charged with any crimes \u2013 is under investigation by prosecutors and is to be questioned.<\/p>\n

It was alleged that he paid to shoot civilians<\/a> during the conflict 30 years ago.<\/p>\n

He is one of at least five Italians under investigation on suspicion of having taken part in \u201chuman safaris\u201d during the siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995.<\/p>\n

It is alleged that dozens of wealthy foreigners from Europe and Russia paid to be allowed to use sniper rifles to shoot civilians in streets and squares.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Italian<\/a> police seized a gun silencer, photographs and documents from the home of another suspect, a 64-year-old Italian man, near Alessandria. Experts are analysing the silencer to find out whether it is compatible with weapons used in Bosnia.<\/p>\n

\u2018He told me he had nightmares\u2019<\/p>\n

The suspect\u2019s ex-wife told prosecutors he used to have nightmares about killing civilians.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cWhen we lived together, one night after we had watched a war film, he had a nightmare and woke up with a start, accidentally hitting me. He told me he had those nightmares, because in the past he had killed people during the war in Bosnia in the 90s.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe told me he would leave Milan by plane and that with him there were other people who took part in these weekends during the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe told me that he had started to take part when the war broke out in Yugoslavia, but then he stopped going on the weekends and spent longer periods there as a sniper, shooting Muslims.\u201d<\/p>\n

The woman said her ex-husband had a photograph of himself in military fatigues, which were \u201cnot a conventional uniform\u201d. He also had a written pass, inscribed in a foreign language she did not understand, which authorised him to travel through the war zone.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cOn the back of this pass, there were markings which corresponded to the people killed during the fighting. There were circles and lines, a sort of tally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Could not have afforded sniper weekends\u2019<\/p>\n

The man, who hunted animals and worked for Genova city council before retiring, has not been named.<\/p>\n

He has denied taking part in \u201chuman safaris\u201d, insisting that he was fighting for Serb paramilitaries during the time he spent in Bosnia.<\/p>\n

He has said that, as a council worker, he could not have afforded to pay to go on sniper weekends even if he had wanted to.<\/p>\n

He told investigators he admired Italy\u2019s Fascist movement, and was fascinated by the country\u2019s paratrooper regiment and its special forces units.<\/p>\n

The man is accused, along with three other Italians, of the aggravated murder of men, women and children who he allegedly shot from hill positions overlooking Sarajevo during the siege.<\/p>\n

The others are an 80-year-old former lorry driver from Pordenone, a 64-year-old businessman from Brianza and a man from Tuscany.<\/p>\n

It is alleged that the men, most of whom had far-Right political views, would meet in the northeastern city of Trieste then travel to Sarajevo.<\/p>\n

Investigators create \u2018psychopath\u2019 profiles<\/p>\n

Investigators have drawn up a psychological profile of the men, claiming they suffered from \u201cpsychopathy\u201d and were devoid of \u201cempathy, remorse or a sense of responsibility\u201d.<\/p>\n

Magistrates in Italy, Belgium and Austria are investigating the \u201chuman safari\u201d allegations. They are due to meet later this month at Eurojust, the EU<\/a>\u2019s criminal justice cooperation agency in The Hague, to discuss their findings.<\/p>\n

Allegations that wealthy foreigners took part in the horrific activity<\/a> were made in a 2022 documentary, Sarajevo Safari, by Miran Zupani&ccaron;, a Slovenian director.<\/p>\n

Ezio Gavazzeni, an Italian journalist, then started looking into the alleged role of Italians. That led to prosecutors in Milan opening an investigation last year.<\/p>\n

About 11,000 civilians were killed by shelling and sniper fire from Bosnian Serb positions on the hills around Sarajevo during the 1992 to 1995 war, which followed Bosnia\u2019s declaration of independence from Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n

It emerged last month that Austrian prosecutors were investigating an Austrian man over allegations he took part in the weekend sniper safaris.<\/p>\n

Try full access to The Telegraph free today. Unlock their award-winning website and essential news app, plus useful tools and expert guides for your money, health and holidays.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Italian nobleman is one of several people being investigated over the killing of civilians in \u201chuman safaris\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6782,5,566,1018,17585,17583,17584,17586],"class_list":["post-25509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-investigation","tag-italy","tag-prosecutors","tag-sarajevo","tag-sarajevo-safari","tag-siege-of-sarajevo","tag-sniper-rifles","tag-war-in-bosnia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}