According to the leaked information, Italian millionaires paid between 80,000 and 100,000 euros to travel on a flight from Trieste to Belgrade on the Serbian company Aviogenex, to act as snipers against civilians.
By Pascual Serrano | 11/23/2025
The emerging reports about the "human safaris" in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War point to Jovica Stanisic as "the Serbian officer in charge of organizing the trips for the wealthy snipers." In fact, the investigation by the Milanese Justice system identifies Stanisic as the coordinator of these trips under the guise of " hunting excursions . "
The Italian press has revealed that the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office is opening an investigation into the snipers who, between 1992 and 1996, murdered more than 11,000 civilians in the besieged city of Sarajevo. From the hills, the snipers fired on passersby who had no choice but to walk down that street and risk being killed.
According to the leaked information, millionaires from that country paid between 80,000 and 100,000 euros to travel on a flight from Trieste to Belgrade on the Serbian company Aviogenex, to act as snipers against civilians.
Italian writer and journalist Ezio Gavazzeni has filed a new complaint with Italian magistrates. Gavazzeni is working with lawyer Nicola Brigida and former judge Guido Salviniu, and they claim to have gathered several witnesses and concluded that Jovica Stanisic “played a key role in the service . ”
But who exactly is Jovica Stanisic? The media are simply reporting that he is the former head of Serbia's State Security Directorate (SDB), and that he was sentenced in 2023 to 15 years in prison for crimes committed in seven municipalities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But if we investigate further and examine the documents from his trial, we discover that behind the high-ranking official under Milošević, what was actually lurking was a CIA agent.
The documents shown at his trial, as revealed by the Los Angeles Times on March 1, 2009, explained that, “for eight years, Stanisic was the CIA’s main contact in Belgrade. In secret meetings held on boats and in safe houses along the Sava River, he shared details about the inner workings of the Milosevic regime. He provided information on the whereabouts of NATO hostages, assisted CIA agents in searching for mass graves, and helped the agency establish a network of secret bases in Bosnia.”
Stanisic was recruited by CIA agent William Lofgren. The two spies forged a clandestine relationship that remained hidden.
The truth came to light when the Serbian man appeared before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The CIA presented the tribunal with a classified document detailing Stanisic's contributions and attesting to his valuable role. The document remained sealed, but sources from the Los Angeles Times revealed its contents.
As revealed during the 2021 trial, Stanisic joined the CIA in 1991, a year before the siege of Sarajevo and the use of snipers. In fact, according to N1info , CNN's local affiliate in the former Yugoslavia, he guided the CIA to the discovery of mass graves in Bosnia in 1993.
Agent Lofgren, who was retired at the time of the trial, said the agency drafted the document to demonstrate "that this supposedly evil person did a lot of good," referring to his cooperation with U.S. intelligence.
Other CIA agents who served in the region defended Satanisic as one of their own and stated that they never saw him involved in war crimes. On the contrary, they considered him a key ally in a rapidly spiraling situation.
The former British ambassador to Serbia, Sir Ivor Roberts, who served in Belgrade from 1994 to 1997, testified in 2019 at the International Court of Justice in The Hague that the former head of Serbia's State Security Service (SDB), Jovica Stanišić, was a "secret agent of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)." This testimony was broadcast by none other than Radio Slobodna Europa , the radio station established for the region by the US government as part of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
In the trial against Stanisic, Ambassador Roberts had to appear as a defense witness, when he suggested that the information that Stanisic was a "secret CIA agent", published in 2016 in his book "Conversations with Milosevic" , was reliable.
When asked by the prosecutor about the origin and veracity of this information, Roberts replied that the British government "did not allow him to talk about these things" and that he had been warned "recently" that he had to respect the Official Secrets Act.
When asked what the British government knew about Stanišić, the witness said he did not want to go into details, as a condition of his testimony was that he not be questioned about intelligence gathering. However, the British ambassador pointed out that London had approved the content of his book, which detailed the Serbian's role as a CIA agent, thus implying UK confirmation of his claim.
Stanisic's complicity with the CIA led him to contribute to the release of 388 NATO soldiers who had been taken hostage, stripped of their uniforms, and tied to trees as human shields against NATO bombing raids. In his own written account, Stanisic claimed to have negotiated the release "with the support of the agency's leadership."
At the time, CIA Director John M. Deutch had a close relationship with the man now under investigation for organizing the human safaris in Sarajevo. He invited him to CIA headquarters in 1996 , and an itinerary of the visit indicates that Stanisic received a warm welcome. This occurred just after the siege of Sarajevo, where the sniper massacres had taken place.
The Serbian spy chief was taken to listen to jazz at the Blues Alley club in Georgetown, Virginia, and driven to Maryland's east coast for a bird hunt. Deutch even gifted Stanisic a 1937 Parker shotgun, a classic weapon admired by collectors.
At the International Criminal Tribunal, the CIA found itself in a difficult position with one of its agents accused of war crimes. For this reason, the agency declined to comment on the document. Because its contents are classified, the letter could only be considered by the tribunal in a private session. Court officials indicated that it was unclear whether the document would be of significant use to Stanisic's defense, or whether it would be used primarily to request a lighter sentence if he were found guilty.
Perhaps his collaboration with the CIA was indeed useful to him, and for that reason, on May 30, 2013, the court acquitted him of his participation in the wars. The problem is that the verdict was overturned on December 15, 2015, after a successful appeal by the prosecution. A new trial began in 2017, and in 2021 he was found guilty and sentenced to 12 years in prison, which was later increased to 15. A life sentence had been sought. Last July, he was transferred to Germany to serve his sentence.
In conclusion, much will be written about those tremendous "safaris" of European billionaires who paid vast sums of money to go and murder civilians in Sarajevo. And much will be written about the Serbian army's involvement, but it seems that the detail being overlooked is that those Serbian officers who organized the hunts were acting more at the behest of the CIA than at Milošević's behest.