CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Could “Sarajevo and Mostar Safari” Become Europe’s Epstein Moment?

Photograph Source: Paalso – CC BY-SA 3.0

The story of the so-called “Sarajevo Safari” – the alleged arrival of wealthy foreign individuals to positions around the besieged city during the Bosnian War (1992–1995), in order to shoot at civilians – now stands at the intersection between a historically documented phenomenon and a still unproven criminal pattern. What can, however, be reliably reconstructed is the path by which this story, over the course of three decades, moved from newspaper columns into the realm of international investigations.

The first trace leads back to wartime 1995. At that time, the Sarajevo daily Oslobođenje published an article titled “Sniper Safari in Sarajevo,” relaying claims from the Zagreb-based Vjesnik, which in turn drew on reports from the Italian press. These articles marked the first appearance of the claim that wealthy foreigners were coming to positions above the city to shoot at civilians. Although lacking any judicial scrutiny at the time, this archival record shows that the story was not a later fabrication, but a contemporary wartime narrative already circulating in the media:

The Turin-based La Stampa, as its contribution to this grim report, carried what it presented as the authentic testimony of its correspondent. Giuseppe Zaccaria wrote that, in Pale, a year or two earlier, a “gentleman in the uniform of the Serbian army” had led him to the edge of his garden, to a shack barely larger than a doghouse. On the floor lay a rubber mattress; on the opposite wall, a small window, with a sniper rifle set into it. “Look,” the “gentleman” offered. Through binoculars, one could clearly see people running across “Sniper Alley” between the Holiday Inn and the skeletal high-rise that had once been the Bristol Hotel. An elderly woman appeared in the crosshairs.

However, even a basic verification of geography and ballistics seriously undermines the credibility of this account. Pale lies approximately 15–20 kilometers in a straight line from central Sarajevo, while the Holiday Inn is located in the very heart of the city. The effective range of standard sniper rifles used during the Bosnian war (such as the M76 or SVD) typically extends to around 800–1000 meters for accurate fire, with maximum ranges of roughly 1200–1500 meters under exceptional conditions. The distance between Pale and “Sniper Alley” far exceeds these parameters, rendering the described scenario practically impossible.

In that sense, the fact that the text in Oslobođenje was reproduced from foreign press — rather than based on direct Sarajevo reporting or reliable local sources — ultimately does more to obscure than to clarify the phenomenon. Instead of exposing a possible criminal network, such a narrative, burdened with obvious geographical and technical inconsistencies, casts doubt on the entire story and opens space for its dismissal as propaganda or sensationalism. Anyone with even a basic knowledge of Sarajevo’s topography and wartime front lines would have struggled to produce such an account without serious........

© CounterPunch