Serbian president denies involvement in alleged Bosnia 'sniper tourism'

Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vucic, has described an allegation that he was involved in "sniper tourism" during the siege of Sarajevo as a "lie".

It follows a complaint submitted to Italian prosecutors by a Croatian journalist, who claimed that video from the 1990s and subsequent testimony by Bosnian officials showed that Vucic was a "war volunteer" with Bosnian-Serb forces at positions overlooking Sarajevo.

Speaking at a UK-Western Balkans business conference in Belgrade, Vucic said he had "never killed anyone, wounded anyone, or done anything similar".

He added that he had "never held a sniper rifle in my life".

Pictures purporting to show him with such a weapon actually show him carrying a "camera tripod", he said.

He said the Croatian journalist was trying to "present me as a monster, as an inhuman, as someone who not only has no emotions, but is a cold-blooded murderer".

More than 11,000 people died during the brutal four-year siege of Sarejevo. Yugoslavia was torn apart by war and the city was surrounded by Serb forces and subjected to constant shelling and sniper fire.

Italian prosecutors opened an investigation earlier this month into allegations that wealthy foreigners had paid to shoot at civilians during the siege of Sarajevo.

That followed a complaint by an Italian writer who had seen the 2022 Slovenian documentary film, Sarajevo Safari, which was the source of the allegations.

Italians and others are alleged by writer Ezio Gavazzeni to have paid large sums to go on "sniper safaris" and shoot at civilians in the besieged city of Sarajevo during the war in the early 1990s.

The claims by Croatian journalist Domagoj Margetic that Vucic had volunteered for a Bosnian Serb militia at a location above Sarajevo had earlier also been strongly denied by Vucic's spokesperson Suzana Vasiljevic.

She said in comments carried by the Times newspaper that the allegations were "a textbook case of malicious disinformation, purpose-built to erode the institutional credibility of the Republic of Serbia and its president. This narrative is devoid of factual grounding and is operationally crafted to generate reputational damage."

At the time Vucic had been working as a journalist and translator in nearby Pale "without any contact with military structures or operational activities", she said.

She added: "President Vucic did not participate in combat activities, did not use weapons, and had no role in any wartime operations."

Similar allegations about "human hunters" from abroad have been made several times over the years.

However, the chief prosecutor at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague has told the BBC that his organisation has no information about the allegations.

Bosnia's war crimes prosecutor received a complaint in 2022, but has not issued any indictment.

UK special forces troops who served in Sarajevo during the siege have told the BBC the allegations are an "urban myth".