The story – advanced by the newspapers “The Republic” and of “Il Gorno” – It has macabre contours. “Human safaris” are described, in which dozens of rich and influential personalities paid between 80 and 100 thousand euros to accompany Serbian troops and murder unarmed men, women and children. The investigation was opened against “unknown persons”, for voluntary homicide aggravated by cruelty and ignoble motives. The testimonies of several People have already come forward to raise suspicions, including Expresso, through contacts on social media.
But the story is just beginning. The Milan prosecutor’s office has only just started interviewing witnesses and investigative journalists from several European countries are also on the ground. One of these journalists is Croatian Domagoj Margetic, who andm In just a few days he managed to collect what he considers to be evidence of the alleged participation of the current Serbian President, Aleksandar Vucic, in the murder of Bosnian civilians during the siege. The complaint has already been sent to Milan.
Face to face between anti-government protesters and police forces in Belgrade
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Margetic’s accusation is based on the fact that, during the organization of these excursions, Vucic was in the same position from which these crimes were perpetrated, the Jewish cemetery in Sarajevo.
The journalist concludes that “there are serious indications that Aleksandar Vucic personally participated in human safaris” and who helped with the “logistics” that facilitated the journey of ‘foreign hunters’ to the military positions in the Jewish cemetery in Sarajevo, reads in the newspaper “The Guardian”. This logistics included support for transportation, translation, organization and supply of equipment, according to the indictment.
The complaint filed against the Serbian President was reinforced by Serbian lawyer Cedomir Stojkovic, who is putting pressure on magistrates in Belgrade to open an investigation. No FacebookStojkovic uploaded a video, from 1993, where Vucic appears carrying what appears to be a sniper rifle, while talking to other armed men.
It is known that, as a young man, Vucic joined Serbian paramilitary units as a volunteer – he himself publicly admitted this. Between 1992 and 1993 he was a member of the Novo Sarajevo Chetnik detachment of the Army of the Republic Srpska (VRS), led by commander Slavko Aleksić.
This detachment occupied the Jewish cemetery in Sarajevo, the same place from which these civilian hunting expeditions were conducted, for several months. In statements to journalists in Belgrade this ThursdayVucic denied the allegations. “I’ve never killed or hurt anyone or done anything like that. They lie about me like sniper in Sarajevo for 10 or 20 years, and they continue to lie,” he said.
As part of the case, the Croatian journalist also cites the testimony of Vojislav Seselj, founder of the far-right Serbian Radical Party, given in The Hague during the defense of the former leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, in 2013, in which he stated that Vucic was part of the military detachment.
The United Nations special tribunal for the former Yugoslavia concluded that there was “ample evidence” that Slavko Aleksić had commanded a volunteer unit based in Sarajevo’s Jewish cemetery between April 1992 and at least September 1993.
In the letter sent to Milan magistrates, the journalist includes the statements of Zukan Helez, Bosnian Defense Minister, who stated that members of that unit told him they saw Vucic shooting, but the Serbian President guarantees that, in those years, he was a journalist, in Pale, about 18 kilometers from Sarajevo. “I can’t listen to nonsense and lies,” he told the Bosnian channel Face TV in 2021. In that same interview, he described the accusations, which he has been facing for several years, as a “political manipulation rooted in the nationalist rhetoric of his youth” and in the “fragile balance of power in the region”, the British daily further describes.
Vucic has always claimed that what is seen in the video is an umbrella and not a shotgun, claims that Helez rejects as “mere excuses”, writes the “Sarajevo Times”.
At least 11,000 people died during the siege of Sarajevo.