FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
The Special Department for War Crimes of the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina has opened an investigation into the so-called "weekend snipers" during the siege of Sarajevo. The Prosecutor's Office itself confirmed this to Radio Free Europe on February 10.
According to the official announcement, concrete investigative actions have been taken by order of the prosecutor. At the end of last year, the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina sent a request to the Italian authorities and contacted the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, in order to verify relevant information.
The investigations were prompted by Italian media reports, published in early November 2025, that the Milan Prosecutor's Office had opened proceedings based on a criminal complaint filed by Italian writer and journalist Ezio Gavazzeni. He claims that during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, foreign nationals paid to come to positions of the Army of Republika Srpska and shoot civilians in Sarajevo with sniper rifles.
Gavazzeni has also announced the publication of a book on the so-called "sniper safari", inspired by the documentary "Sarajevo Safari" by Slovenian author Miran Zupanić.
At the end of January, the Sarajevo City Council approved the decision for the city to join the court proceedings initiated in Milan against the suspects.
Currently under investigation is an 80-year-old Italian citizen, a former truck driver from the province of Pordenone, who was questioned on February 9. Italian prosecutors suspect that he, together with still unidentified persons, participated in a criminal plan of sniper activity against civilians in Sarajevo in the period 1992–1995. Italian media report that he is a person with extreme right-wing beliefs, who has openly declared himself a fascist.
During the nearly four years of the siege of Sarajevo, according to data from victims' associations and decisions by international courts, every tenth child killed was killed by a sniper's bullet, while over 14,000 children were injured.
However, to date, no individual sniper has been prosecuted, either by domestic or international courts. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, in its rulings against top Republika Srpska officials, has found that the sniper campaign was aimed at systematically terrorizing the civilians of Sarajevo.
Lini një Përgjigje