ChaoticMusings

Gun-toting enthusiasts who travelled thousands of miles to shoot at innocent civilians for fun during the siege of Sarajevo competed to see who could kill the most beautiful women, a book claims.

Wealthy tourists from Russia, Canada and the US made weekend trips to the majority-Muslim city and paid Serbian fighters to join the so-called Sarajevo Safari, between 1992 and 1995.

The distasteful claims from the bloody conflict - which left more than 11,500 civilians dead - were explored in a 2022 documentary that suggested Western tourists, including Brits, Germans, Spaniards and Italians, as well as snipers from Russia, US and Canada, paid higher sums to shoot at children. 

Now a book called Pay and Shoot by Croatian journalist Domagoj Margetic has published a swathe of documents handed to the author by a Bosnian intelligence officer before he was killed in 1996.

Nedzad Ugljen gathered proof of the 'safari' including files showing the tourists paid their Serbian handlers 80,000 marks - almost £35,000 at the time - to shoot at middle-aged men and women, The Times reported.

But young women would command a higher price of 95,000 marks, while the most expensive 'targets' were pregnant women, priced at 110,000 marks. 

Margetic said: 'Ugljen also wrote the foreigners competed to see who could shoot the most beautiful women.'

The agent revealed he had spoken to members of the Bosnian-Serb militia who hosted the foreign snipers - with 'many' claiming that a European royal was among those who took part. 

'He would arrive by helicopter, stay in Vogosca near Sarajevo and wanted to shoot at children,' he alleged.

The book also reveals how the idea for the 'safari' originated in Croatia, not Serbia, and involved a Croatian who formerly worked for Yugoslav intelligence. 

Margetic's book endorses previous claims that the indiscriminate bloodshed seen during those years may not have been perpetrated solely by the Bosnian-Serb militias, but also by ordinary civilians eager for a thrill.

Wealthy foreigners wanted in on the action - and paid handsomely to live out their fantasies by travelling to Sarajevo on the weekends to partake in a 'human safari'.

In November 2025, Italian authorities launched an investigation into the claims - with survivors hopeful the truth may finally be uncovered.

There have been rumours for decades regarding the veracity of the allegations.  

In 2007, John Jordan, a former US Marine, testified at The Hague before the United Nations-led ad hoc international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

The veteran made astonishing claims about his time volunteering as a UN firefighter in Sarajevo - the war-torn capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina - between 1992 and 1995.

The crisis began when the Bosnian-Serb forces - agitated by Bosnia and Herzegovina's decision to break from federal Yugoslavia - besieged the city for 44 months, cutting off food, electricity and setting whole neighbourhoods ablaze with cannon fire and shelling.

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15793515/Sarajevo-Safari-hunters-paid-shoot-people-kill-women.html