‘They had sick minds’: A human safari in Sarajevo
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 2 March 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For decades, a chilling rumour has haunted Sarajevo: that foreign tourists paid to visit the besieged city in the early 1990s to shoot at its residents. Today, Italian authorities are investigating several cases of alleged ‘tourist snipers,’ thrusting these accusations back into the headlines. Now, an eyewitness to these so-called ‘human safaris’ has spoken to The Times about what he saw more than 30 years ago.
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Guest: Tom Kington, the Italy correspondent, The Times
Host: Manveen Rana
Producer: Sophie McNulty
Translator: Aleksa Antic
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Read more: Sarajevo sniper tourists ‘killed children by day, then partied at night’
Clips: BBC, ITN, FRENCH 24 English.
Photo: Getty Images, Tom Kington.
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Transcript
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| 0:33.3 | From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. |
| 0:38.8 | I'm Manvina. |
| 0:48.5 | Shells have been landing near civilians all day. |
| 1:02.3 | Over 30 years ago, Serb nationalist forces besieged the city of Sarajevo, subjecting residents to daily shelling and sniper attacks while cutting off food, power and water supplies. |
| 1:09.5 | The hospitals have lost count of just how many innocent civilians |
| 1:12.4 | have become snipers' victims. There are no longer any streets in the city which are perfectly safe |
| 1:17.4 | and those venturing out have to dash between cover. The siege went on for over a thousand days |
| 1:24.6 | and claimed over 10,000 lives. |
| 1:28.3 | You're killing innocent children, this man screamed. |
| 1:30.3 | Why don't you shoot me instead? |
| 1:37.3 | The siege was part of a campaign that was later recognized as a genocide. |
| 1:43.3 | But even at the time, disturbing rumors had stopped. that was later recognised as a genocide. |
| 1:45.9 | But even at the time, |
| 1:49.6 | disturbing rumours had started to circulate, |
| 1:55.1 | that the horrors of Sarajevo had crossed over from warfare into a macabre form of sport, |
| 1:59.0 | that tourists had paid to visit the city and to attack innocent civilians. |
| 2:08.6 | In 1995, an Italian newspaper reported on holidays in Bosnia, manhunting included. |
| 2:20.4 | In 2007, a US Marine recalled seeing tourists shooting in the city. |
| 2:27.7 | These were whispers, too dark to dwell on, but they didn't disappear. |
| 2:38.1 | Last November, three decades on, Italian prosecutors announced that they were looking into what had happened. Prosecutors in Milan have opened |
| 2:44.9 | an investigation into Italians who allegedly paid members of the Bosnian Serb army for trips to Sarajevo |
... |
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