Thirty years after they were first aired, claims that hundreds of foreigners paid Bosnian Serb forces for the chance to shoot at besieged Sarajevans have resurfaced. But the evidence remains thin and the accounts of key sources conflicting and unverified.
Azem Kurtic
Michael Giffoni says he heard about the exchange of information between Bosnian intelligence and the SISMI shortly after his arrival in Sarajevo on October 25, 1994, as the 29-year-old deputy head of the Italian Special Diplomatic Delegation.
The SISMI agents, he said, were officially registered as security officers for the delegation, not part of UNPROFOR.
Giffoni quoted the agents as telling him about the claims made by the Serb volunteer fighter from Paracin, passed to them by Bosnian intelligence. But Giffoni says the information exchange took place after the Italian Special Diplomatic Delegation was set up in April 1994, much later than Subasic claimed, and said it in no way involved UNPROFOR. Italy, as a neighbour of Yugoslavia and a former fascist occupier of parts of the Balkans during World War Two, was not part of UNPROFOR.
“There were civilians, officials,” said Giffoni. “But none of them were linked to SISMI. I can rule that out,” he told BIRN. “This is something that needs to be corrected, because it is not true.”
Giffoni is quoted in Gavazzeni’s book from other sources, but the author never actually interviewed him.
Andrea Angeli, a UN press officer in Sarajevo in 1993-1994, said UNPROFOR contained no Italian police or military personnel, something the Italian government also confirmed at the time.
“If Mr. Subasic wanted to talk to the SISMI, he could have done so directly,” he said. “I don’t understand why he brought up the UN mission.” Angeli said that, until 1994, he himself, a civilian, was the only Italian in UNPROFOR and that he personally was never in touch with either Subasic or Hajrulahovic.
Gavazzeni’s book relies heavily on unnamed sources. Among those offering any substantial information regarding the alleged ‘safari’ phenomenon, only Subasic and Giffoni are quoted on record. Of the two, only Subasic was actually interviewed by Gavazzeni. Their accounts form much of the foundation of his book. Gavazzeni told BIRN that Giffoni was present during the meeting when the Bosnians handed over the intelligence, a meeting the author told BIRN happened “at the end of ‘93”.
Giffoni disputed this, telling BIRN: “In ‘93, I was dealing with Bosnia but from Rome; I arrived in Sarajevo in October ‘94.” He said he only heard about the intel from the SISMI agents.
Asked about the discrepancies in their accounts, Gavazzeni said Subasic may have been confused about the involvement of UNPROFOR, perhaps mistaking Giffoni as being affiliated with the peacekeeping force. “In all likelihood, Michael Giffoni slept, ate, and lodged in those [UNPROFOR] premises,” Gavazzeni told BIRN.
Besides denying being present at the meeting, Giffoni also told BIRN he only ever visited UNPROFOR facilities for meetings and press conferences.
In a later conversation with BIRN, Gavazzeni conceded Giffoni could not have been present at the meeting, but offered another explanation: that the SISMI officers contacted by Bosnian military intelligence were already on the ground before Italy opened its Special Diplomatic Delegation. The contradictions in Giffoni’s and Subasic’s accounts are “issues related to memory”, he told BIRN, though he conceded he hadn’t cross-checked Subasic’s account with that provided by Giffoni in other media and mentioned in his book.
On the eve of publication of this article, Gavazzeni sent BIRN links to four PDF files totalling 1,257 pages, saying they contained evidence that “SISMI was present in Sarajevo since 1993, lodged at UNPROFOR”. Subasic had sent BIRN the same documents several hours earlier. However, a search in the files for the acronym ‘SISMI’ produced zero results. ‘UNPROFOR’ appears a few times, but not in relation to SISMI activities.
Whether SISMI agents were present in Sarajevo in 1993, officially or not, could not be definitively established. However, the disagreement over the issue highlights differences between key accounts of what happened – recollections that formed the basis for the book that sparked the international media frenzy about the ‘sniper safaris’.
Giffoni says that when SISMI did receive the information about the foreign snipers from Bosnian intelligence, the Italian agency’s response was brief: “The report was taken into account, it was investigated and the traffic was blocked.”
That’s what he says he was told in 1994 by the two SISMI agents stationed at Italy’s Special Diplomatic Delegation. In 1995, after Oslobodjenje in Bosnia picked up the original Corriere della Sera story, Giffoni says he asked Hajrulahovic directly. Hajrulahovic, he said, confirmed giving the intel to SISMI and said he was told “traffic had been stopped”.
What exactly was meant by ‘traffic’ remains unclear, however: the flow of paying foreigners or paid weekend warriors, or something else completely?
According to Giffoni, even the SISMI agents in Sarajevo didn’t know what steps had been taken in Italy, though he remains sure that Italian authorities intervened in some form. Giffoni said that everything he found out was from conversations he had; he saw nothing committed to paper. Giffoni remained in the Italian diplomatic service until 2014, when he was charged with and later acquitted of criminal conspiracy and aiding and abetting illegal immigration stemming from allegations of fake visas being issued by the Italian embassy in Kosovo at the time he was ambassador. He never returned to the diplomatic service.
Gavazzeni told BIRN he has two new sources who, he said, testified to Italian prosecutors in June this year. These sources, he said, claim to have received documents in the spring or summer of 1994 containing the names of five Italians suspected of paying to shoot on Sarajevo. He did not provide any further information to BIRN about the sources.
Numbers disputed
