Overview
- Austria's justice ministry said investigations have been open since April 25 into two suspects, one an Austrian citizen, accused of acting as paid 'weekend snipers' who fired on civilians during Sarajevo's 1992–1995 siege.
- The probe follows the 2022 Slovenian documentary Sarajevo Safari and recent work by journalist Ezio Gavazzeni, whose book and complaint helped trigger parallel inquiries in Italy and a war-crimes probe in Sarajevo.
- Reporting and witness accounts allege wealthy foreign clients paid organisers for the trips and that some paid as much as €300,000 for a weekend of shooting from the hills above Sarajevo.
- Authorities say the cases remain at the fact-finding stage with no public prosecutions yet, and investigators face typical hurdles in decades-old war-crimes cases such as lost records, anonymous witnesses, and cross-border jurisdictional issues.
- If investigators can corroborate evidence, the inquiries could produce rare criminal accountability for siege-era abuses and offer survivors new avenues for justice while raising political sensitivity because complaints include material tied to senior regional figures.