Since last year, regional and world media have been buzzing about Fr "Sarajevo Safari". Apparently, rich foreigners, mainly Italians, they came in an organized manner to Serbian positions above the besieged Sarajevo and paid big money to shoot at civilians.
The story originates from a film and two books - one written by the Italian Ezio Gavaceni, a frequent media interlocutor who advocated for the initiation of proceedings at the prosecutor's office in Milan. But recently, Reuters reported that the prosecution has nothing concrete in its hands.
The second book was written by the controversial Croatian journalist Domagoj Margetić.
Now Michael Martens, an experienced reporter Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung which follows the space of the former for a long time Yugoslavia, writes that the whole story about the "safari" is actually a story about the unprofessionalism of the (and Western) media, which spreads rumors lightly.
Judah never heard of it.
Martens on Network X notes that none of the correspondents who really know the region wanted to cover the subject. For the purposes of the article he is writing, Martens spoke with Tim Jude, a well-informed Balkan expert who was a correspondent in 1992 The Times i Economist from Belgrade, but he was in Sarajevo at key moments.
According to Martens, he explained why he had not written a single line about the alleged "safari" until now, even though correspondents at the time knew about snipers and the occasional appearance of foreigners on the battlefield.
"I can't rule out that there could have been a few isolated cases of people coming for that, although I've never heard of it," says Juda of the allegations that wealthy foreigners paid to hunt down civilians, "but the idea that there were a lot of them and it was organized, and no journalist, humanitarian or UN staff ever mentioned it, is incorrect."
Žuda said that he asked people "he trusts" like Nataša Kandić or BIRN investigative journalists, and that they think the same. "Surely the Hague Tribunal would deal with that story if it was really true," says Judah.
"Who to trust..."
He thinks it's a "sensationalist story" that people fall for "who weren't there and can't imagine how extremely unlikely such a thing is."
"Some of the things I read about it, say about logistics and flights from Trieste to Belgrade, can be written and believed only by people who have no idea that the Belgrade airport was closed at the time."
Martens announces that he will write about the whole case, as well as the books of Gavaceni and Margetić. X ends the online post with:
"Who to trust: Tim Judy, an experienced pre-professional and highly respected reporter - or an Italian fiction writer who has no idea about the Balkans and a Croatian conspiracy theorist with no credibility among his colleagues in Croatia? Hard choice..."
By the way, the German court recently ordered the weekly Spiegel to withdraw an article in which Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić was connected to the alleged "safari". The magazine then took a statement from Vučić and changed the article, then published it again.
