The president of Serbia has denied any involvement in “human safaris” during the Balkan wars of the 1990s when wealthy foreigners allegedly paid to hunt residents of the besieged city of Sarajevo with sniper rifles.
Aleksandar Vucic, 55, was responding to claims by the investigative journalist Domagoj Margetic that he worked with the pay-to-kill tourists in 1992 and 1993 when he volunteered for a Bosnian Serb militia which commandeered a Jewish cemetery above Sarajevo. “I believe he was involved in the Sarajevo safari,” Margetic said.
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The Croatian journalist has sent his allegations to magistrates in Milan who have opened an investigation into reports that groups of foreigners paid up to £88,000 for a chance to join Bosnian Serb fighters on the hills around Sarajevo during the 1992-96 siege which left more than 11,500 people dead. Shooters allegedly arrived from Europe and Russia and paid extra to kill children.
A video of a car allegedly used by militia leader Slavko Aleksic, with a human skull in a UN helmet on the bonnet, during the siege of Sarajevo
The Milan inquiry is based on evidence supplied by Italian writer Ezio Gavazzeni, who said a former Bosnian intelligence officer supplied him with information about Italian shooters including the owner of a private clinic in Milan specialising in cosmetic surgery.
Gavazzeni started his investigation after seeing a 2022 documentary Sarajevo Safari, by Slovenian filmmaker Miran Zupanic, which quoted an unnamed American former spy claiming he saw foreigners in Sarajevo paying to kill civilians.
Now Margetic has suggested Vucic was there. “There is no doubt that in 1992 and 1993 Vucic was at the Jewish cemetery which was the most exclusive and expensive position for foreign shooters,” he alleged.
Bosnian civilians run for shelter in Sarajevo in July 1992
PASCAL GUYOT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
His claims were emphatically denied by Vucic’s spokeswoman. Suzana Vasiljevic dismissed them as “a textbook case of malicious disinformation, purpose-built to erode the institutional credibility of the Republic of Serbia and its president. This narrative is devoid of factual grounding and is operationally crafted to generate reputational damage.”
She said that Vucic, then in his early twenties, was working as a journalist and translator at the time in nearby Pale “without any contact with military structures or operational activities”.
Vucic, right, with President Putin
DARKO VOJINOVIC/AP
She added: “President Vucic did not participate in combat activities, did not use weapons, and had no role in any wartime operations.”
Margetic, however, claimed he had evidence that Vucic was a volunteer with a militia run by Slavko Aleksic, starting with a 1994 magazine interview in which Vucic said he volunteered to fight at the Jewish cemetery. “So who do we believe, the Vucic of 1994 or the Vucic of 2025?” Margetic said.
He claimed Aleksic had alleged in 2017 that Vucic was a member of the unit. “Aleksic did not confirm or deny the ‘Safari’ happened but he said that when foreigners arrived, Vucic would translate for them.”
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Margetic claimed a video shot at the time at the cemetery shows Vucic carrying a Serbian “PAP” rifle, although Vasiljevic claimed it was a tripod he used as a journalist, adding that “these manufactured allegations” were no more than “tabloid manipulation”.
One of Sarajevo’s main streets, which during the war was known as the “Sniper Alley”
HIDAJET DELIC/AP
Another video shows a car allegedly used by Aleksic features a human skull on the bonnet — said to be taken from a Bosnian corpse — wearing a UN helmet.
More evidence emerged on Thursday in Italy to back up allegations about the foreign visitors. Michael Giffoni, an Italian diplomat based in Sarajevo at the time, said he was told “cartloads of rich people were arriving from everywhere. Hunters but also business people”.
He told La Repubblica that a Bosnian intelligence official, Edin Subasic, informed Italian intelligence officers in the city that a captured Serbian paramilitary solider had confessed that Russians and Italians were flying to Trieste in northeast Italy and being driven to Sarajevo to shoot.
Giffoni said the information was passed on to the Italian secret service in Rome which replied a few months later that after an investigation, the organisers had been identified and the flow of shooters from Italy had been halted.