Serbian president alleged to be linked to 'sniper tourists' in siege of Sarajevo

A Croatian investigative reporter has filed a complaint with Milan prosecutors against the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vučić, for his alleged involvement in the "Sarajevo safari" affair, in which snipers from Italy and other countries allegedly travelled to the Bosnian capital to kill civilians during the four-year siege of the city in the 1990s.

- Lorenzo Tondo Trieste Angela Giuffrida Rome

Last week, Milan prosecutors launched an investigation aimed at identifying the Italians allegedly involved on charges of voluntary murder aggravated by cruelty.

According to investigators, groups of “sniper tourists” are alleged to have participated in the massacre after paying large sums of money to soldiers belonging to the army of Radovan Karadžić, the former Bosnian Serb leader who in 2016 was found guilty of genocide and other crimes against humanity, to be transported to the hills surrounding Sarajevo so that they could shoot at the population for pleasure.

More than 10,000 people were killed in Sarajevo by constant shelling and sniper fire between 1992 and 1996 in what was the longest siege in modern history, after Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia.