I add to here an article to further discuss this question because it is difficult to me to grasp how western educated normal people have agreed to kill people just for (more) money during Yugoslavia war.
The post:
" A Safari for Hunting Human Beings
I have documented some horrific things in my career as a journalist—
from the genocide in Rwanda to ISIS, and everything in between—
but if the reports currently shaking Europe turn out to be true,
we are dealing with one of the sickest, most depraved, monstrous acts imaginable,
and it appears they took place in the very first war I ever covered.
Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia, 1992–1995.
These were the years when the country once called Yugoslavia was tearing itself apart in a series of brutal wars.
The bloodiest conflict was in Bosnia, where Serbs, Croats, and Muslims fought one another.
Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital—mostly Muslim—was besieged by the Bosnian Serb army from 1992 to 1995.
Side note 1: The Muslims of Bosnia were originally Serbs and Croats (Christians). Centuries ago, when the Ottoman Empire conquered the region, many converted to Islam for convenience. The Serbs who did not convert saw them as the worst traitors. To this day, they call them “Turks” as an insult.
Side note 2: All sides—Serbs, Croats, and Muslims—committed atrocities in this war. And we, more than anyone, must be careful not to divide the world into absolute good guys and bad guys, black and white.
Sarajevo is a stunningly beautiful city—in peacetime.
In war it became a death trap.
The city is surrounded by hills overlooking it from all sides. And on those hills, for three and a half years, the most ruthless snipers positioned themselves and fired at anyone moving in the city below.
I use the word “ruthless” deliberately.
The leader of the Bosnian Serbs, the man orchestrating this war, was Radovan Karadžić.
Before the war he was a psychiatrist. His specialty: “states of chaos.”
In many ways, Bosnia became his practical laboratory—fighting in a way meant to drive the enemy insane, to push them to abandon their homes forever.
Karadžić would later become the number one wanted man at The Hague for war crimes in Bosnia.
That’s where I arrived.
I was on the side of those being shot at.
The siege of Sarajevo was horrific.
Every step outside was a gamble with your life. But people couldn’t stay indoors forever—they needed water, food, firewood. Winters were freezing. Not far from there, just before the war, the Winter Olympics had been held.
So there was almost no walking in the streets—only running.
Civilians walked or sprinted pressed against walls or anything that could hide them even for a moment from the sniper’s line of fire.
In the photo, you may see a soldier, but most of those running were civilians.
When the wall ended, they’d take a deep breath and sprint to the next one. During those few seconds, sniper shots echoed.
And sometimes the running figure fell. They had been hit.
Even worse was understanding that there was nothing you could do to help someone who collapsed—because the sniper was still aiming.
In the early days, almost everyone who exposed themselves trying to pull a wounded person to safety was immediately shot as well.
This was my first time in a war zone. Completely surreal. Terrifying.
I kept wondering—unable to comprehend—how snipers could deliberately pick off civilians, women, the elderly, children…
What made it even more surreal was that one of the most “convenient” sniper positions overlooking the city was in the Jewish cemetery on one of Sarajevo’s hills.
It was the most frightening place for me, and for everyone down in the city center.
Sarajevo was hell.
And now, it turns out that many people from Western countries wanted to take part in this hell.
Wealthy, respectable middle-class civilians from Western Europe and the U.S.,
who longed to stand on those hills and shoot at civilians trying to flee for their lives.
It is hard for me to accept that I’m even writing this.
For years I thought this was nothing more than an urban legend.
But in recent days, names have begun to surface—
people who went on “Sarajevo safaris” to hunt human beings, paying a fortune to fulfill their sick fantasy.
They approached the Serb militias on the hills, paid €80–100k (in today’s value), and received access to sniper positions—and sometimes weapons as well.
Following an investigation by an Italian journalist and a documentary about “murder tourism” in Sarajevo, it was revealed that these “hunting trips” were usually held on weekends—because the participants were wealthy businessmen who worked their normal jobs during the week.
The chief prosecutor in Milan has opened an investigation, since among roughly a hundred identified participants, several were Italian.
> “We are talking about people with money, with reputations—businessmen who, during the siege of Sarajevo, paid in order to kill unarmed civilians. They left Trieste to go hunting and then returned to carry on with their normal lives.”
And it gets even more insane…
Apparently there was a price list for those who wanted to shoot and kill:
“Children cost more, then men—preferably in uniform and armed—then women, and lastly the elderly, who could be killed for free.”
I no longer know what to think or write about the human spirit and the distortions that exist in human beings.
In the coming days we will likely learn more.
For the record, the Serbs (the Bosnian Serbs—Republika Srpska) deny all these reports as a malicious fabrication.
During those years in Sarajevo, 10,000–15,000 civilians were killed by sniper fire.
In Bosnia as a whole, over 100,000 people were killed in that war. "
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