Rich foreigners killed civilians from Serbian positions in besieged Sarajevo AJB DOC

Whoever thought that everything has been said about the four-year siege of Sarajevo, that there are no more secrets about the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina, will be shocked by the discovery of new facts and details.

Movie Sarajevo safari by Slovenian director and screenwriter Miran Zupanič is one such story, shocking, unbelievable, and at the same time dark and pessimistic. The truths about the siege of Sarajevo, which are revealed in this honest and brutal documentary, which will be shown at this year’s AJBDOC, push the limits of what is tolerable in understanding war.

Sarajevo safari is a film that talks about the little-known phenomenon of “manhunting”, actually, more accurately and precisely, about rich foreigners who came to the positions of the Army of the Republika Srpska in the vicinity of Sarajevo and from there shot around the city, killing civilians.

The starting point, the one from which the “adventurers” went on a safari hunting for people, was Belgrade, says Miran Zupanič in an interview for Al Jazeera Balkans: “Belgrade then had normal air connections with foreign countries, and then there was a special logistical arrangement. One source says that they were taken from Belgrade by helicopter of the Army of Yugoslavia to Pale, according to another, they were transported by road. Higher in rank, more powerful and richer probably had more comfortable conditions for traveling to Sarajevo.”

• What is ‘Sarajevo Safari’?

– The “Sarajevo safari” was a specific, unimaginable type of hunting, hunting people. During the siege of Sarajevo, rich foreigners who paid a certain compensation were allowed to shoot from Serbian positions at people in the free part of the city. The victims were civilians, who at that moment found themselves under the sniper fire of those cruel foreigners.

• How many people, according to your knowledge, participated in that ‘game’ of killing?

– That phenomenon was, of course, and still remains shrouded in secrecy. We have removed that veil as far as possible and I cannot give you any concrete answer, because I do not know it. But in any case, a whole chain of those who offered those hunting arrangements, those who went on safari and those who took care of logistics and organization in the field was needed.

• When did you first encounter this phenomenon?

– My producer Franci Seitz first told me about the “safari” in February 2019, and that story was absolutely shocking to me. We filmed in Bosnia and Herzegovina with Franci and cameraman Božo Zadravec already at the beginning of 1993. Eyes of Bosnia was the first and, I think, the only Slovenian documentary filmed on the soil of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war. Then they were in Sarajevo at the end of ’93 and the beginning of ’94. year and recorded even more material.

Except for the wounding of Faruk Šabanović, all archival footage in the film Sarajevo safari filmed by our team. In fact, Franci is most responsible for that film, because he searched for years and then found people who were willing to talk about the safari in front of the camera. Unfortunately, there were also those who first agreed to the recording, but then changed their minds. The fear is still present after almost 30 years.

• To what extent did the authorities in Pale participate in organizing the ‘Sarajevo Safari’?

– According to the testimonies, some members of the Army of the RS and the Army of Yugoslavia participated in the organization of the “safari”. Who specifically and at what level of command, or perhaps even political decision-making, I do not know. I have no information about the role of the authorities in Pale. I must point out here that our intention was not to identify specific people, because, considering the delicacy of the topic, that information was not even available to us.

As far as I know, our film is the first to reveal this terrible story to the public. If anyone has programming interest and production resources, they are free to continue searching, but I must mention right away that collecting authentic and credible material is extremely difficult.

• Who were the participants of the ‘safari’; from which parts of the world, which nationalities?

– One source mentions Americans, Canadians and Russians, another Italians. In any case, they were powerful enough and rich enough people with a very specific psychological profile.

• Were there people from the former Yugoslavia among them?

– No one has confirmed that information.

• Was Belgrade a rallying point for transporting foreign adventurers to the Sarajevo battlefield?

– Belgrade then had normal air connections with foreign countries, and there was still a special logistics arrangement. One source says that they were taken from Belgrade by helicopter of the Army of Yugoslavia to Pale, according to another, they were transported by road. Higher in rank, more powerful and richer, they probably had more comfortable conditions for traveling to Sarajevo.

• The testimony of a Serbian volunteer from Paraćin reveals that they were dressed in hunting gear. What was the profile of the people who came to kill the citizens of Sarajevo – rich, politically influential, psychopaths, adventurers?

– Our film raises more questions than it answers. It is absolutely certain that in that laboratory of evil that we call the globe there is a special kind of people who are ready to shoot anyone who comes across their sights without any external reason: a child, a mother, any anonymous man or woman. What internal urges lead them to do so? What pleasure does it offer them? What kind of power do they have that someone organizes it for them? Where do they come from and where do they return?

There are countless questions to which I have no answers. But that’s not all: foreign intelligence services have been following this phenomenon and it seems that no one from the international community has intervened to stop this ‘safari’. Why not? That is the most important question for me.

• Did they pay for all that and do you have any information about how much it cost, what was the tariff for participating in the ‘safari’, where they had the opportunity to kill people as game?

– Yes, foreigners paid large sums of money, but no one could tell me exactly how much it was. One witness claims that the rates were higher if they hit a child. The same witness, who himself was present several times at the hunt for human heads, says that most of the shots were fired from the Grbavica area.

Let me say one more thing. I’ve done a lot of movies in my career, and none have been nearly as dark as that one. So black and so pessimistic. But, on the other hand, it seems extremely important to me that all of us who have this possibility – spread the knowledge about the phenomenology of evil that is in the human being. To know how to oppose that evil. But not with one’s own evil, but with individual and common good.