By Habib Al Badawi
When Killing Becomes Commerce: The Milan Investigation as Moral Reckoning
The Siege of Sarajevo remains one of the starkest illustrations of systematic violence against civilians in late twentieth-century Europe. Beneath the familiar narrative of snipers and shelling lies a more disturbing layer: the Milan investigation reveals that killing civilians in Sarajevo was, for some, a transactional service. This revelation exposes the darkest capabilities of human nature when moral restraints collapse entirely.
Crimes against humanity are defined by organized, patterned, and intentional violence that reflects a collapse of moral order. Victims are reclassified as expendable targets, stripped of their dignity and fundamental right to exist. The alleged involvement of Italian citizens who reportedly paid Bosnian Serb army members for opportunities to kill civilians transforms the Sarajevo tragedy into a chilling case study of how atrocity systems attract willing participants beyond the immediate conflict zone. Such participation underscores how crimes against humanity extend across borders, involve multiple actors, and cannot be easily contained within traditional legal or geographic boundaries.
The Milan investigation reopens questions of complicity, responsibility, and transnational accountability long left dormant. It forces a reconsideration of whether the violence in Sarajevo was merely brutal warfare or whether it represented a broader marketplace of cruelty shaped by ideological fervor, militaristic fascination, and the dehumanization of a besieged population. Through legal analysis, historical reconstruction, and ethical reflection, this examination situates the alleged paid killings within established frameworks of international criminal law, highlighting how individual choices, structural enablers, and institutional failures converge to produce crimes of extraordinary gravity.
The Historical Context: Geography as an Instrument of Terror
Prosecutors in Milan have opened an investigation into Italians who allegedly paid members of the Bosnian Serb army for trips to Sarajevo to kill citizens during the four-year siege in the 1990s. [^1] 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, following Bosnia and Herzegovina’s declaration of independence from Yugoslavia. [^2] Snipers were perhaps the most feared element of life under siege because they would pick off people on the streets, including children, at random—as in a video game or safari.
Strategic Topography
Sarajevo’s location in a basin surrounded by mountains made it particularly vulnerable to siege warfare, transforming the city’s natural geography into an instrument of terror. The hills that had once offered scenic views became platforms for systematic violence, positions from which those wielding rifles could select targets with impunity. The main street running into Sarajevo, Meša Selimović Boulevard, was nicknamed “Sniper Alley” because, despite extreme danger, it could not be avoided as the route to Sarajevo airport. [^3] Trams and buses had their windows shot out. Sniper warning signs served as grim reminders that every moment of movement could be fatal.
The Weaponization of Randomness
The randomness of the violence was itself a weapon. The most high-profile deaths by sniper fire were those of Boško Brkić and Admira Ismić, a couple documented in the film Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo, who were killed by a sniper in 1993 while trying to cross a bridge. [^4] Their bodies remained in no-man’s land between the Bosnian and Bosnian Serb positions for several days. Photographs were published widely and became symbolic of the randomness and inhumanity of the war. This image—two young people whose love transcended ethnic divisions, cut down as they attempted to flee toward a future together—crystallized the senselessness and cruelty that defined the siege. It demonstrated that love, hope, and innocence offered no protection when humanity itself had been abandoned.
Atrocity as Leisure Activity
Groups of Italians and other nationalities, so-called “sniper tourists,” allegedly participated in the massacre after paying large sums 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. [^5] These individuals were reportedly transported to the hills surrounding Sarajevo to shoot at the civilian population for pleasure. This allegation introduces a dimension of violence that transcends conventional understanding of wartime brutality, suggesting the existence of a market for murder where human life was commodified for wealthy thrill-seekers.
The Investigation’s Origins
Milan prosecutors, led by Alessandro Gobbi, launched an investigation aimed at identifying the Italians involved on charges of voluntary murder aggravated by cruelty and abject motives. [^6] The investigation originated from a legal complaint submitted by Ezio Gavazzeni, a Milan-based writer who gathered evidence on the allegations, as well as a report sent by the former mayor of Sarajevo, Benjamina Karić. Gavazzeni said he had first read reports about alleged sniper tourists in the Italian press in the 1990s, but it was not until he watched Sarajevo Safari, a 2022 documentary by Slovenian director Miran Zupanič, that he began to investigate further. [^7]
In the documentary, a former Serb soldier and a contractor claimed that groups of westerners would shoot at the civilian population from the hills around Sarajevo. Its claims have been vehemently denied by Serbian war veterans, revealing the difficulty of piercing through decades of denial surrounding the accused. Gavazzeni claimed “many, many, many Italians” were allegedly involved, without providing a specific figure. “There were Germans, French, English… people from all Western countries who paid large sums of money to be taken there to shoot civilians.” [^8]
Motivational Profile
The investigator’s characterization of the participants reveals profound moral emptiness: “There were no political or religious motivations. They were rich people who went there for fun and personal satisfaction. We are talking about people who love guns, who perhaps go to shooting ranges or on safari in Africa.” ^9 This description strips away any pretense of ideological commitment or military necessity, exposing the alleged crimes as pure expressions of sadistic pleasure. The comparison to safari hunting suggests that the participants viewed the people of Sarajevo not as fellow human beings but as game to be stalked and killed for sport.
The Infrastructure of Evil: Networks, Routes, and Facilitation
Gavazzeni claimed the Italian suspects would meet in the northern city of Trieste and travel to Belgrade, from where Bosnian Serb soldiers would accompany them to the hills of Sarajevo. “There was a traffic of war tourists who went there to shoot people,” he said. “I call it an indifference towards evil.” ^10 This description reveals not isolated acts of violence but a structured system, complete with assembly points, transportation routes, military escorts, and financial transactions. The existence of such infrastructure suggests organizational sophistication and the involvement of multiple facilitators—military personnel who controlled access to strategic positions, intermediaries who arranged logistics, and perhaps others who profited from or enabled this grotesque commerce.
Geography of Complicity
The route itself—Trieste to Belgrade to the hills overlooking Sarajevo—traces a geography of complicity that spans national borders and exposes the transnational dimensions of these alleged crimes. Trieste, a city with historical connections to various European networks, served as the gathering point. Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, functioned as the transit hub where foreign participants met their military handlers. Finally, the hills surrounding Sarajevo became the sites for acts that violated every principle of international humanitarian law and basic human decency.
This network architecture reveals how atrocities depend on perpetrators, enablers, and supporting infrastructure. The Bosnian Serb military units that allegedly accepted payment and provided access were not merely fighting a war; they were monetizing control of terrain and weaponizing their strategic positions for profit. This transformation of military assets into commodities for recreational killing represents profound corruption of the armed forces’ fundamental purposes and obligations under the laws of war.
The Psychological Dimension: Dehumanization and Moral Disengagement
To understand how such acts become possible, we must examine the psychological mechanisms that enable individuals to kill without ideological motivation, political conviction, or military necessity. The alleged “sniper tourists” appear to have employed several interconnected forms of moral disengagement.
Dehumanization as Cognitive Transformation
Participants engaged in dehumanization, viewing the people of Sarajevo not as individuals with families, dreams, and inherent worth but as targets in what Gavazzeni described as resembling “a video game or a safari.” ^11 This cognitive transformation—from person to target—is essential for recreational killing to become psychologically manageable. When victims are objectified, the psychological barriers to violence dissolve.
Diffusion of Responsibility
The participants likely experienced diffusion of responsibility through the presence of military handlers and the context of an ongoing conflict. The siege itself provided moral cover; violence was already occurring, suffering was already widespread, and individual acts could be rationalized as merely adding to chaos that existed independently of any single participant’s choices. The military framework further diluted personal accountability—if soldiers were already shooting at civilians, then joining them could be framed as participation in existing operations rather than autonomous decisions to kill.
Commodification as Psychological Distance
The financial transaction itself may have functioned as psychological distancing. By paying for the “experience,” participants could frame their actions as purchases rather than murders, as consumers of a service rather than architects of suffering. This commodification creates cognitive space between action and consequence, allowing perpetrators to avoid confronting the full moral weight of their choices. Money becomes a medium that transforms killing from a moral act requiring justification into a commercial transaction.
Escalation of Violence-Seeking
The motivational profile described by Gavazzeni—wealthy individuals seeking “fun and personal satisfaction” through guns and violence—suggests participants who had cultivated a fascination with weaponry and potentially consumed military or hunting culture in ways that glorified power over life and death. The progression from shooting ranges to African safaris to hunting humans in Sarajevo represents an escalation of violence-seeking behavior, each stage normalizing greater levels of destruction and eroding moral restraints that would ordinarily prevent the ultimate transgression: killing another human being for pleasure.
Legal Framework: Crimes Against Humanity and Transnational Accountability
The Milan investigation represents a significant exercise in transnational justice, asserting Italian jurisdiction over crimes committed abroad by Italian nationals. The legal characterization of these alleged acts as voluntary murder aggravated by cruelty and abject motives anchors the prosecution in domestic criminal law, while the broader context—systematic attacks on civilians during the siege—situates the violence within the framework of crimes against humanity under international law.
Elements of Crimes Against Humanity
Crimes against humanity require several elements: a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, committed with knowledge of that attack, and involving specified prohibited acts such as murder, extermination, or persecution. [^12] The Siege of Sarajevo clearly constitutes the attack context—more than 10,000 civilians killed over four years through deliberate targeting represents both the scale and systematic nature required. The alleged foreign participants, by paying for access to shoot at civilians, would have possessed the requisite knowledge that their actions formed part of this broader attack.
Modes of Liability
The modes of liability available to prosecutors include:
Direct perpetration: Those who fired weapons at civilians can be charged as direct perpetrators of murder.
Accomplice liability: Those who provided financial support, logistical assistance, or facilitation could face charges for aiding and abetting. The payment itself could constitute material support that enabled the commission of crimes.
Command responsibility: Bosnian Serb soldiers who allegedly accepted payment and provided access could face charges related to command responsibility if they had authority over the conduct of operations or accomplice liability for facilitating foreign participants’ crimes.
Jurisdictional Basis
Italian prosecutors can assert jurisdiction based on active nationality—the principle that states may prosecute their own citizens for serious crimes committed anywhere in the world. [^13] For crimes against humanity, many jurisdictions recognize universal jurisdiction, allowing prosecution regardless of where the crimes occurred or the nationality of perpetrators or victims. The gravity of the offenses and their status as violations of international law provide strong grounds for Italy to investigate and prosecute, though practical challenges of evidence collection, witness availability, and cross-border cooperation remain substantial.
Temporal Considerations
These alleged crimes occurred in the 1990s, meaning that decades have passed since the events in question. Statutes of limitations may apply to some domestic offenses, though crimes against humanity are typically imprescriptible—not subject to limitation periods—due to their exceptional gravity. [^14] Evidence may have degraded, witnesses may have died or become unavailable, and memories may have faded. However, the passage of time has also allowed documentary materials to emerge, testimonies to be preserved, and investigations like Gavazzeni’s to piece together patterns that might not have been visible immediately after the conflict.
Evidentiary Challenges: Building Cases Across Decades and Borders
The prosecution faces significant evidentiary hurdles in transforming allegations into convictions. The foundational challenge lies in establishing a chain of proof that connects specific individuals to specific acts of violence.
Types of Evidence Required
Documentary records: Travel documentation (passport stamps, border crossings, airline tickets) could establish that suspects were in the region during the relevant time periods. Financial records (bank transfers, cash withdrawals, unusual expenditures) might reveal payments consistent with the alleged operation. Communications (letters, emails, and phone records) could contain discussions of plans, negotiations with facilitators, or post-event discussions that demonstrate knowledge and intent.
Military documentation: Bosnian Serb army units that controlled the hills around Sarajevo may have kept logs, though these might be incomplete, destroyed, or deliberately hidden to conceal criminal conduct. Unit records that show unexplained visitors, references to foreign nationals, or financial irregularities could provide crucial corroboration. However, accessing such materials requires cooperation from authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and potentially Serbia, jurisdictions with complex political relationships to the siege and its aftermath.
Witness testimony: Former Bosnian Serb soldiers who served in units around Sarajevo during the siege represent potential sources—some may be willing to testify about the presence and activities of foreign participants, either out of conscience or in exchange for consideration in their own potential prosecutions. Survivors of the siege who witnessed or have knowledge of foreign participants could provide testimony about specific incidents. The challenge lies in ensuring that testimony is credible, corroborated by independent sources, and capable of withstanding aggressive cross-examination.
Documentary evidence: The documentary Sarajevo Safari that catalyzed Gavazzeni’s investigation provides suggestive material but not courtroom-ready evidence. Its evidentiary value depends on whether the underlying sources—the former soldier and contractor featured in the film—can be identified, located, and induced to provide formal testimony under oath. The vehement denials by Serbian war veterans suggest that those with direct knowledge face social, legal, or personal pressures against cooperation.
Corroboration Requirements
Building a successful prosecution requires multiple types of evidence working in concert. Documentary records alone cannot prove that individuals fired weapons at civilians. Witness testimony must be corroborated by independent sources. Forensic evidence linking shooting positions to casualty patterns would strengthen the case but may be unavailable decades after the events. The prosecution must construct a narrative that connects travel patterns, financial transactions, witness accounts, and casualty records into a coherent and convincing chain of proof.
Institutional Responsibility and the Shadow State
If the allegations are substantiated, they reveal not merely individual criminality but institutional corruption within elements of the Bosnian Serb military structure. The existence of an organized system for facilitating paid civilian shootings implies command tolerance or active participation. Officers who controlled access to strategic positions around Sarajevo would have known about foreign visitors seeking fire at the city below. Those who accepted payment or arranged logistics became accomplices in the commercialization of atrocity.
Command Responsibility
This raises questions of command responsibility under international law. Military commanders can be held liable for crimes committed by subordinates if they knew or should have known about the crimes and failed to prevent them or punish perpetrators. [^15] If commanders in units around Sarajevo were aware that foreign nationals were paying to shoot civilians from positions under their control, their failure to stop this practice could constitute criminal responsibility. If commanders pocketed the fees, this monetization of violence constitutes war profiteering added to the catalogue of alleged offenses.
Perversion of Military Function
The transformation of military assets into commercial commodities represents profound corruption of the armed forces’ fundamental character. Militaries exist, under both national and international law, to defend legitimate security interests through lawful means. The deliberate targeting of civilians violates the most basic principles of international humanitarian law. [^16] To monetize such violations—to treat the ability to kill protected persons as a saleable service—perverts military authority into a criminal enterprise. This suggests not a breakdown of discipline in isolated incidents but rather a systemic failure in which military structures became vehicles for crimes against humanity.
The Moral Architecture: When Human Values Collapse
At the deepest level, the allegations emerging from the Milan investigation confront us with fundamental questions about human values and their fragility. The transformation of human beings into purchasable targets represents a complete collapse of the moral architecture that ordinarily constrains violence.
Negation of Human Dignity
Human dignity, the foundational principle that every person possesses inherent worth regardless of nationality, ethnicity, religion, or status, was entirely negated. [^17] The people of Sarajevo were not treated as rights-bearers, subjects of moral concern, or individuals deserving of basic respect. Instead, they were objectified—reduced to targets, to entertainment, to the means through which paying participants could experience the thrill of killing. This objectification is the essential precondition for crimes against humanity; once people are seen as objects rather than subjects, the psychological barriers to violence dissolve.
Abandonment of Shared Humanity
The principle of shared humanity—the recognition that all people belong to a common moral community with reciprocal obligations—was abandoned. The alleged participants came from Western European countries that prided themselves on civilization, culture, and respect for human rights. Yet these values apparently provided no protection against the allure of recreational killing. The willingness to travel abroad specifically to shoot at civilians reveals a profound disconnection from any sense of shared humanity. For these individuals, ethnic or cultural difference created a moral distance sufficient to permit acts that would be unthinkable against those perceived as fully human.
Instrumentalization of Violence
The value of peace and the norm against violence—central to both law and ethics—were instrumentalized and corrupted. War creates contexts in which violence becomes normalized, but even in war, international humanitarian law maintains crucial distinctions between combatants and civilians, between military necessity and wanton destruction, and between legitimate force and criminal brutality. [^18] The alleged “sniper tourism” violated all these distinctions. There was no military necessity, no strategic purpose, and no operational justification. Violence became purely recreational, stripped of even the problematic justifications that accompany organized conflict.
Complicity, Indifference, and the International Community
Gavazzeni’s characterization—”an indifference towards evil”—captures something essential about how atrocities persist. The alleged crimes required not only active perpetrators but also networks of facilitators, a permissive environment, and the absence of effective intervention.
Structural Failures
The international community’s response to the Siege of Sarajevo, while including humanitarian aid and eventually military intervention, was widely criticized as too slow and too limited. [^19] The fact that a marketplace for recreational killing could allegedly operate during a siege that lasted four years, in a European city, in the 1990s, raises uncomfortable questions about international will and capability. What intelligence did Western governments possess about foreign nationals traveling to conflict zones? What measures were taken to prevent or punish such travel? What responsibilities do states bear when their citizens allegedly participate in crimes against humanity abroad?
Delayed Accountability
The passage of time before serious investigation began also reflects structural indifference. If allegations about “sniper tourists” appeared in the Italian press in the 1990s, why did three decades pass before prosecutors opened a formal investigation? The answer likely involves multiple factors: the difficulty of gathering evidence during and immediately after conflict, the political complexity of pursuing crimes connected to a war in which Western powers eventually intervened, the low priority given to prosecuting one’s own citizens for participation in foreign atrocities, and perhaps an unwillingness to confront the disturbing implications of these allegations.
Memory, Justice, and the Obligation to Victims
The victims of these alleged crimes—the civilians killed in Sarajevo, whether by local snipers or foreign participants—deserve recognition, remembrance, and justice. Each person who died had a name, a life, relationships, aspirations, and an inherent right to exist that was violently negated. The reduction of these individuals to statistics—part of “more than 10,000 people killed”—risks completing the dehumanization that enabled their murders in the first place.
Functions of Justice
Justice serves multiple functions in the aftermath of mass atrocity. It holds individuals accountable, deterring future crimes by demonstrating that even decades later, perpetrators may face consequences. It establishes an authoritative record of what occurred, creating a counter-narrative to denial and revisionism. It validates victims’ suffering by formally recognizing the injustice done to them. It reinforces the normative framework of international law, reaffirming that certain acts—no matter the context—cannot be tolerated. [^20]
The Milan investigation, however, ultimately concludes, performs these functions. By taking the allegations seriously, conducting a formal inquiry, and potentially bringing charges, Italian authorities signal that participation in crimes against humanity cannot be ignored simply because perpetrators returned home and decades have passed. This sends a message both backward—to those who participated in atrocities in the 1990s—and forward—to anyone contemplating similar acts in contemporary or future conflicts.
Prevention and Contemporary Relevance
The lessons from Sarajevo and the Milan investigation extend beyond historical accountability to contemporary prevention. The alleged phenomenon of “war tourism”—foreigners traveling to conflict zones to participate in violence—remains a concern. In conflicts in Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere, foreign fighters have joined various armed groups, some motivated by ideology, others by adventure-seeking or fascination with violence. While most attention focuses on foreign fighters joining designated terrorist organizations, the Sarajevo allegations remind us of that participation in atrocities can take many forms.
Preventive Measures
Several preventive measures emerge from this case:
Travel monitoring: States must monitor and regulate travel to conflict zones, particularly by individuals with histories of violence, weapons fascination, or extremist affiliations.
Early detection: The international community needs mechanisms for early detection and intervention when foreign nationals participate in violations of international humanitarian law.
Clear legal frameworks: There must be clear legal frameworks and political will for prosecuting citizens who commit crimes against humanity abroad, ensuring that geographic distance does not create impunity.
Cultural factors: Societies must address the cultural factors that contribute to violence normalization. The alleged progression from shooting ranges to hunting to killing humans suggests a continuum along which some individuals travel when violence is glorified and human targets are dehumanized. Media depictions of war, gun culture, militarism, and the ethics of violence all contribute to the environment that either restrains or enables such progressions.
Concluding Remarks
The allegations emerging from the Milan investigation confront us with the fragile architecture of human values. At its core, this inquiry is about the moral universe that collapsed when human lives were reduced to purchasable targets. Crimes against humanity are ultimately crimes against our shared moral fabric—acts that tear through the collective principles that define human dignity.
The allegations that civilians in Sarajevo were hunted for sport expose how human values can be distorted when dehumanization becomes normalized. War did not create this distortion; it merely revealed it. The willingness of individuals to treat human beings as objects of entertainment signals an ethical vacuum that emerges not only from hatred or orders but also from the slow erosion of empathy, responsibility, and moral restraint.
The Milan investigation offers a belated but necessary reminder that accountability is both a legal obligation and a reaffirmation of shared human values. By pursuing truth across borders and decades, it challenges the culture of impunity and reasserts that every life extinguished in Sarajevo mattered. Each victim had a name, a history, a family, and an unfulfilled future. Their deaths were not collateral damage—they were violations of the most basic principles of what it means to be human.
Justice, remembrance, and truth are the pillars that protect human values in the aftermath of atrocity. Without them, the past remains unresolved, wounds remain open, and conditions for future inhumanity persist. This investigation stands as both memorial and warning. It honors victims by acknowledging the full extent of their suffering, and it warns future generations that human values—once compromised—can collapse with astonishing speed.
The prosecution in Milan, whatever its outcome, represents a reaffirmation that even decades later, even across borders, even when powerful interests resist, the fundamental truth remains: every human life possesses irreducible value, and those who violate that truth must eventually answer for their crimes.
Notes
[^1]: Based on investigative reporting by Italian journalists and the Milan prosecutor’s office announcement, 2024.
See also: Italy investigates its role in the Siege of Sarajevo,” The Telegraph, November 11, 2025, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/11/11/italy-investigation-siege-of-sarajevo-bosnian-war/.
[^2]: Research Centre for Southeast European Studies, University of Graz; ICTY case records.
[^3]: Testimony documented in ICTY proceedings and contemporary journalistic accounts.
[^4]: “Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo” (1994), directed by John Zaritsky, widely reported in international media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnQ1lTAVjhw
[^5]: ICTY, Prosecutor v. Radovan Karadžić, Case No. IT-95-5/18-T, Judgment (24 March 2016).
[^6]: Milan Prosecutor’s Office public statements, 2024.
[^7]: Sarajevo Safari (2022), directed by Miran Zupanič.
[^8]: Statements by Ezio Gavazzeni to Italian media, 2024.
[^12]: Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article 7.
[^13]: See principles of extraterritorial jurisdiction in international law.
[^14]: Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity (1968).
[^15]: ICTY jurisprudence on command responsibility, including Prosecutor v. Delalić et al., Case No. IT-96-21-T.
[^16]: Geneva Conventions (1949) and Additional Protocols (1977).
[^17]: Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1.
[^18]: Principles of distinction and proportionality under international humanitarian law.
[^19]: Power, Samantha. “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide (2002).
[^20]: Teitel, Ruti G. Transitional Justice (2000).
