The first suspect in the Sarajevo 'human safaris' denies involvement

RomeChildren, the elderly, and pregnant women became the preferred target of tourist groups, mostly wealthy and influential Europeans. who paid huge sums of money to have them shot with rifles from the hills surrounding Sarajevo, the city besieged during the Balkan War between 1992 and 1996The Milan prosecutor's office opened an investigation in November and on Monday summoned the first Italian suspect in these "human safaris" to testify. He denied any involvement.

The suspect is Giuseppe Vegnaduzzo, an 80-year-old former truck driver residing in the city of Pordenone, near the Slovenian border. During the siege of Sarajevo, Vegnaduzzo worked as a truck driver for an Italian metalworking company and frequently traveled to the Balkans for work. However, according to testimonies from some neighbors gathered during the investigation, the man privately boasted of having participated in organized trips to shoot defenseless civilians—including children, pregnant women, and the elderly—who were besieged in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War.

Prosecutors Marcello Viola and Alessandro Gobbis questioned Vegnaduzzo for an hour, and he denied any involvement in these "human safaris." "My client answered the prosecutor's questions, reiterated his absolute innocence regarding the events, and trusts that, at this time, the judiciary will verify his absolute innocence, beyond the media sensationalism," his lawyer, Giovanni Menegon, declared as he left the courthouse. The lawyer also announced that he will take whatever legal action is necessary to protect his client's reputation in the face of articles published in Italy in recent days.

The first Italian suspect accused of being part of a "weekend sniper" group arrived at the Milan courthouse concealing his face with a dark cap and a mask that covered almost his entire face. According to local media, he admitted to the judges that he had traveled to Sarajevo during the years of the Serb siege of the Bosnian capital, but only for work-related reasons. He claimed that the stories he allegedly told boasting about his participation in these expeditions had been distorted and "exaggerated" by witnesses interviewed during the crisis.

A confirmed rumor

The existence of some macabre tourists who traveled to Sarajevo from Italy to work as snipers What seemed like an urban legend was the idea of ​​these trips for leisure. However, it became an obsession for the Italian writer and journalist Ezio Gavazzeni, who spent two years investigating these alleged journeys with the help of former Sarajevo mayor Benjamina Karic and a Bosnian former military officer and intelligence agent. The "weekend snipers," as they were dubbed in Italy, traveled on a direct flight from Trieste to Belgrade, and from there were transported by helicopter to the mountains of Sarajevo and Mostar. They were paid the equivalent of between 80,000 and 100,000 euros to kill innocent people who had been trapped for almost four years under artillery fire from Serbian Radovan Karadzic, convicted in 2016 of genocide and crimes against humanity.