According to a recent book, thrill-seekers with a penchant for firearms reportedly traveled vast distances during the Sarajevo siege to engage in a grotesque competition targeting civilians, particularly focusing on the most attractive women.
Affluent visitors from nations like Russia, Canada, and the United States allegedly made short trips to the predominantly Muslim city, paying Serbian combatants for the opportunity to partake in what was infamously dubbed the Sarajevo Safari between 1992 and 1995.
These unsettling allegations, arising from a conflict that claimed over 11,500 civilian lives, were brought to light in a 2022 documentary. The film suggested that Western tourists, including individuals from the UK, Germany, Spain, and Italy, along with snipers from Russia, the US, and Canada, offered substantial sums for the chance to target children.
In a new publication titled “Pay and Shoot,” Croatian journalist Domagoj Margetic presents an array of documents. These were reportedly provided by a Bosnian intelligence officer who was tragically killed in 1996.
Evidence gathered by Nedzad Ugljen detailed the existence of the ‘safari,’ with records indicating that tourists paid their Serbian guides 80,000 marks—equivalent to nearly £35,000 at the time—to target middle-aged men and women, as reported by The Times.
Young women were reportedly considered pricier targets, commanding 95,000 marks, while the most valuable and shocking targets were pregnant women, with a price tag of 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.
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
‘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.
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.
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 it’.
The veteran’s testimony ultimately lacked weight, however. He admitted he ‘never actually saw one take a shot’, but insisted seeing the armed foreigners around Grbavica and other neighbourhoods.
Nevertheless, Jordan’s allegations didn’t disappear, and continued to accrue interest and speculation over time.
In 2022, Slovenian director Miran Zupanič released a documentary entitled ‘Sarajevo Safari’, gathering testimony from witnesses who said they saw such activity first-hand.
One of the interviewees was an anonymous Slovenian man, who worked as an intelligence officer for the US during the Balkan Wars and claimed to have visited Bosnia around 35 times between 1992 and 1994.
A young boy looks up at his crying mother as they leave Sarajevo’s Kosevo hospital after her husband was wounded by a shell in 1995
Seeking shelter behind a United Nations vehicle, a Bosnian man pinned down by sniper fire, peers from behind the wheel in Sarajevo in 1995
Describing the types of foreigners who took part in the ‘safari’ – of which he witnessed seven – the former agent said they were from the ‘upper echelons’.
‘These people were certainly not ordinary people. They were people in high positions, protected… people who, after having everything, seek another thrill, saying to themselves: ‘Why shouldn’t I now shoot a child or an adult in Sarajevo and gain another pleasure? I won’t only kill animals,’ he said.
‘I never heard the prices. I only know it was terribly expensive, and that the price was higher for a child,’ he added.
In a lengthy description, the witness recounted how he was invited on one of the safaris and escorted into a military jeep, after being given a bulletproof vest, a helmet and a green uniform as preparation.
‘They told me they would show me the close positions of their soldiers,’ the witness said, but then the jeep stopped in front of a building and he noticed something peculiar about the so-called troops.
‘There I saw three gentlemen whose faces immediately told me they were not from Bosnia, not Serbs, not Montenegrins, they had to be from the West.
‘One of them even looked Russian. I can tell by the face. They were prepared: you could see something was about to happen. I thought they were foreign journalists… Then I connected the dots. These men couldn’t wait to come and do something,’ he said.
He described how from the jeeps, the group was taken into two ‘camouflaged’ rooms where participants – aided by spotters – shot at civilians from rotating positions, including women and children.
‘I was horrified by the safari. It’s the peak of depravity. Such violent, inhumane killing,’ the former intelligence officer said.
He was even asked if he wanted to take part. ‘Are you interested in something adrenaline-filled?’ an official said, an offer he claimed he declined.
‘I had my own binoculars so I could see. After the man fired, the person fell. Most were hit in the chest, because the head is harder. But I also saw a hit to the head. From that I saw they were very good hunters,’ the former agent said, recounting one of the shootings.
The anonymous witness said he was told by the Serbs to ‘never repeat’ the things he saw – incidents he described as the ‘dark side’ of the war.
But the wealthy tourists themselves seemed unfazed and detached from the alleged horror. ‘You fired your trophy shot and went home,’ the former agent said, struck at their nonchalance.
Serbian war veterans have denied the allegations.
