Austria is investigating two people suspected of paying to shoot civilians on ‘Sarajevo Safaris’ during the 1990s.
Wealthy tourists from Europe, Russia, Canada and the US made weekend trips to the majority-Muslim city, now the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and paid Serbian fighters to join the sniper trips between 1992 and 1995.
Hunters would pay vast sums of money to hit men, women and children while the city was under siege by Bosnian Serbs during the Bosnian War.
They would pay extra to kill pregnant women and children, and would compete with each other to see who could kill the most beautiful women.
Allegedly hosted in a Jewish cemetery that overlooks the city, those who took part would then party late into the night following their sick hunts.
Austria’s justice ministry said on Tuesday: ‘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.’
The probe was launched after Alma Zadic, a Bosnian-born member of the Austrian Green Party and the former justice minister, raised a parliamentary question.
She said: ‘These allegations concern the gravest war crimes and must be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted. There can be no room for impunity.
Sarajevo residents run along ‘Sniper Alley’ under the protection of French United Nations soldiers, 1994
Seeking shelter behind a United Nations vehicle, a Bosnian man pinned down by sniper fire, peers from behind the wheel in Sarajevo in 1995
A Bosnian special forces soldier returns fire on April 6 1992 in downtown Sarajevo as he and civilians come under fire from Serbian snipers
‘The idea that people may have paid money in order 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.’
Earlier this month, a book called Pay and Shoot by Croatian journalist Domagoj Margetic claimed to have 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.
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 claimed Nedzad Ugljen, a Bosnian intelligence officer before he was killed in 1996, passed on a dossier of information to him.
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.
A French soldier stands alongside a group of Sarajevans seeking shelter behind a UN armoured personnel carrier from sniper-fire, 1995
A man carries his injured son as others behind him carry a wounded person on a stretcher in 1993. The youngest members of families were often shot during the siege
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.
Jordan stationed himself in Sarajevo during the longest siege in the history of modern warfare to help civilians, and gave evidence years later about the horrors he witnessed.
The landmark trial led to the sentencing of Bosnian-Serb general Dragomir Milosevic to 33 years in jail for murder, inhumane treatment and overseeing a campaign of terror that killed thousands, mainly Muslims.
At the trial, Jordan testified about a number of atrocities, including the Serb’s indiscriminate targeting of unarmed residents. He himself was shot in the chest while responding to a fire at the city’s frontline, just north of the Grbavica area, held by the Bosnian-Serb forces.
Sarajevo residents keep close to a wall trying to avoid snipers and mortars in 1993 in the besieged capital as fighting intensified
Doctors at Sarajevo’s State Hospital carry Mujo Causevic, a Bosnian Army soldier wounded by sniper fire on one of Sarajevo’s front lines, to be treated, 1995
He also testified about how Serb shooters seemed to deliberately aim for the youngest in a family, as a way to ’cause the most pain to survivors’.
‘If an adult and child were walking together, the child would be shot. If a family was walking, it would be the youngest. In a crowd of girls, it seemed that the most attractive would be shot,’ he said in his statement.
But then he made another sinister allegation, yet to be proven in a court of law: that Sarajevo was crawling with ‘shooter tourists’ armed with hunting weapons, who had travelled overseas and paid handsomely to snipe for the Serb side as a bit of weekend fun.
‘I had witnessed on more than one occasion personnel who did not appear to me to be locals by their dress, by the weapons they carried, by the way they were being handled, i.e., guided around by the locals,’ Jordan testified in court.
When asked to elaborate by the judge, he specified how these ‘tourist shooters’ wore a ‘civilian-military’ combination-style dress that made them distinct from the Serb fighters, and carried weapons that were more suited to ‘hunting boar in the Black Forest than urban combat in the Balkans’.
The foreigners also appeared ‘completely unfamiliar’ with the city, Jordan said, and were seen ‘being led, literally almost by the hand, around an area by people who are familiar with it’.
