"Sarajevo Safari": A mother asks whether her six-year-old Adnan was killed for “entertainment”

The brutal killings of civilians – especially children – during the siege of Sarajevo are once again in the spotlight after Italian media reported that prosecutors in Milan have opened an investigation into the so-called “weekend snipers,” a case more widely known as the “Sarajevo Safari.”

The investigation is being conducted against unknown perpetrators and concerns alleged sniper tourists who, during the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, allegedly paid tens of thousands of dollars for the opportunity to shoot at civilians in besieged Sarajevo, according to the Italian newspapers La Repubblica and Il Giorno. The inquiry was launched following a complaint filed by journalist and writer Ezio Gavazzeni and former judge Guido Salvini.

Killed while his aunt held his hand

For Fatima Popovac, the mother of young Adnan, recounting the day her son was brutally murdered 31 years ago reopens a wound that has never healed. She recalls how, on that tragic September morning, her sister Munira took Adnan and his younger sister Arnela to a local shop in Hrasnica, hoping to cheer them up with a small treat during a lull in the shelling. The girl was in her arms, while Adnan held her hand.

“Just after she left, it felt like a bullet flew past my ear. I stepped into the house for a moment and heard a shot. My husband was in the yard, but when I came out, he was gone. Silence… People hiding behind corners, the shooting continuing. I called for my husband—nothing. I heard a neighbour saying that some ‘Dado’ was hit. I said: ‘It’s not Dado, it’s my Ado,’” Popovac recalls.

The fatal sniper bullet, fired from the direction of Vojkovici, then under VRS control, struck the boy beneath his right eye while his aunt was holding his hand.

Adnan was a wonderful, intelligent child, says his tearful mother as she shows his name engraved on the Memorial to the Murdered Children of Besieged Sarajevo. With eyes full of tears as she recites Al-Fatiha, her grief makes clear that a mother’s pain never fades.

“My little girl and my sister survived. Allah blessed me with another son later; today I have a son, a daughter, and two grandchildren. Thank God, I hope for His mercy, and I hope my Adnan is waiting for his mother in Paradise,” Fatima says.

When asked about the renewed discussion of “weekend killers” who allegedly paid to shoot civilians during the siege, Popovac says she simply cannot comprehend what kind of people they are.

“Why are they hiding these monsters? Whose interest is it to keep this buried? Those prosecutors of ours and the world powers who came here to kill us. Both the ones who allowed it and the ones who did it must be punished. My Adnan was killed while my sister held him by the hand, with my baby girl in her arms. A male child was targeted and killed,” she says.

Killings for entertainment

When asked whether she, as a mother, wonders if someone could have killed her child “for fun,” she replies:

“Of course I wonder. I cannot imagine someone in human form doing such a thing. I would like to see that monster—what he looks like, whether he has anything human in him. To kill someone’s child… What could a six-year-old possibly be guilty of? To kill a child for entertainment—this is beyond comprehension. No one can explain that to me.”

The news that Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation into the “Sarajevo Safari” gives her a glimmer of hope.

“There are signs that some good people are beginning to investigate. I pray that God opens the path so we discover who these people among us were. For someone to find pleasure in killing a child is madness. My mind cannot grasp it.”

“When I see a child fall and hurt itself, my heart aches. I just want the truth to be known, for these monsters to be identified. I don’t hate anyone. I couldn’t harm anyone—not even the person who killed my child. My soul is not like that.”

She concludes: “What keeps me going is knowing that we will all stand before God one day, and that the truth will come out—whether in this world or the next. Still, I would like these evildoers to face justice in a court of law.”

At the AJB DOC Film Festival in 2022, the documentary Sarajevo Safari, directed by Slovenian filmmaker Miran Zupanic and produced by Al Jazeera Balkans and Arsmedia, brought public attention back to the issue of “weekend snipers” in besieged Sarajevo.

The Siege of Sarajevo

The siege began on April 5, 1992, and ended on February 29, 1996, lasting 1,425 days. It is estimated that around 500,000 shells were fired at the city during that time. On average, 329 shells fell on the city each day.

During the siege, around 350,000 residents were exposed to daily fire from the former Yugoslav People’s Army, various paramilitary formations, and later the Army of Republika Srpska, firing from positions on the surrounding hills.

A total of 11,541 people were killed in Sarajevo during the siege, including 1,601 children. According to postwar research, nearly four-fifths of all casualties occurred in the first two years.

For terrorizing civilians during the siege, the Appeals Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals sentenced wartime VRS commander Ratko Mladić and Republika Srpska leader Radovan Karadzic to life imprisonment. The ICTY also sentenced Stanislav Galic, commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps, to life in prison, while Dragomir Milosevic and Momcilo Perisic—also senior VRS officers—were convicted as well.