Sarajevo sniper’s confession: “I was there shooting, and I still have nightmares” (translated article)

Considering all the news about wars and the on-going discussion of genocide permeating them, I wanted to share this translation of a month-old Italian article talking about the confession of a"tourist" that volunteered to kill civilians in the Siege of Sarajevo.

A sniper from Sarajevo is spilling the beans. He is a former hunter who claims to have traveled to Yugoslavia several times between 1994 and 1995—to shoot. And he says he is “directly involved” in the story of the weekend snipers, even though he operated in other areas. The man speaks with Marianna Maiorino for Il Fatto Quotidiano. “It’s not like at the shooting range; it’s not like shooting at a target. The worst part is seeing people in agony. The amputees. Or watching a hemorrhage that becomes unstoppable. As long as you shoot and see someone who isn’t moving anymore, who is dead, that’s one thing. But when a large-caliber bullet takes away an arm or a leg, it’s different. I still have nightmares at night,” he says.

“I’ve always had a soft spot for the far right. I used to go to the Balkans because I hated Muslims,” the man explains. He didn’t travel on charter flights from Milan, but he knows there were people who did. He liked Milosevic: “He took some of the heat off us. Because all sorts of people come here, and now anyone who comes to Italy gets benefits.” He adds: “Some people from Milan went there to have fun, yes, but I don’t think an organization paid for it; maybe they paid for better-organized transportation.” He also claims that it’s not true that people paid 100 million to kill a child.

The trip was organized as follows: “I paid for transportation, especially for the pilot who flew the small plane,” who was a “true mercenary” and “risked losing his license by flying unauthorized flight plans at 50 meters over the Adriatic.” The planes took off from Abruzzo and Puglia and landed in Macedonia or Montenegro. He adds: “The Serbs were very keen to use Europeans trained in long-range shooting, because they lacked the technical and operational expertise to carry out such operations. ‘Volunteers’ is a more accurate term, as we now see with some people in Ukraine who disguise themselves to avoid detection.”

He adds: “There were a lot of former members of the Folgore (the Italian Army’s paratrooper brigade, ed.) who went there either on temporary leave or after being discharged. And then there were a lot of foreigners, British in particular, but also French and a few Germans.” As for weapons, he used “hunting rifles that were available there. But I also managed to get my hands on a PRG and my favorite, the Dragunov, SVD—a Kalashnikov with semi-automatic fire (not full-auto), and a 67-centimeter-long barrel.” He concludes: “These are things you have to try before you talk about them. It’s not like at the shooting range.”