The “Sarajevo Safari” investigation has yet to uncover any evidence sufficient to launch criminal charges against anyone.
Jacques Ellul, the esteemed French scholar on Propaganda, vividly described the modern “current events man,” whom he considered “a ready target for propaganda”:
“Such a man is highly sensitive to the influence of present-day currents; lacking landmarks, he follows all currents… Because he is immersed in current affairs, this man has a psychological weakness that puts him at the mercy of the propagandist.”
This vulnerability stems from the fact that “one thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones. Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but he does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man’s capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandists, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks.”
Forgotten means erased from public consciousness when convenient for the propagandist. Inevitably, the current false narrative will be replaced by another fabricated story, with no one held accountable for spreading either the present or past untruths.
Though penned in the 1960s, Ellul’s observations could just as well describe today’s unfolding “Sarajevo Safari” propaganda saga.
As Ellul portrays the audience for this and similar manufactured stories flooding the media landscape, they are deliberately stripped of historical context, coached to accept unverifiable claims without question, and, most critically, emotionally overwhelmed by the issues, leaving them powerless to grasp the full picture.
Just as Jacques Ellul asserts, “under these conditions there can be no thought.”
Since our previous reflection on the “Sarajevo Safari” matter several months prior, no corroborating proof of the accusations has surfaced or been disclosed. The allegation contends that during the 1993-1994 “siege of Sarajevo,” Serbian forces besieging the city permitted affluent foreigners to pay large sums—up to 100,000 euros adjusted for today—to use sniper rifles to kill civilians in the urban area below. The Public Prosecutor’s office in Milan initiated a high-profile inquiry into these claims last November, but despite six months of intense investigation, no legally sufficient evidence supporting an indictment has emerged.
The investigation into “Sarajevo Safari” has failed thus far to produce any credible proof justifying criminal charges concerning civilians allegedly targeted from a mountaintop during the war in Sarajevo. Currently, the sole person linked is an unidentified octogenarian former Italian truck driver who is reported to have “boasted of having hunted men in Sarajevo.” It remains questionable what weight such claims will hold in court unless prosecutors find tangible evidence connecting this individual and his rifle to actual civilian casualties. Will the principle against self-incrimination, a cornerstone of civilized legal systems, be overridden simply to convict this anonymous man due to lack of evidence? If the retired truck driver claimed responsibility for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, would that be grounds for conviction? Furthermore, it’s hard to imagine that any truck driver, regardless of disposition, could afford, even in affluent Italy, to pay 100,000 euros for a wartime Sarajevo “hunting” trip.
Despite these glaring inconsistencies, or what Ellul might classify as contradictions, the “Safari” tale still persists in media discourse. The latest example is a detailed exposé in Der Spiegel provocatively titled: “The rich Europeans who travelled to Sarajevo to hunt people.”
News coverage of “Sarajevo Safari” is ceaselessly inflated with fresh allegations and laced with baseless speculation. While promotional rhetoric is abundant, confirmed facts remain elusive. Lacking solid evidence or critical scrutiny, Ellul’s “current events man,” now representing the majority of news audiences, remains ensnared in the propaganda web.
The fabricated “Sarajevo Safari” case exemplifies how modern propaganda can generate “something” from nothing. It interweaves techniques utilized by notorious twentieth-century propagandists such as Goebbels and Bernays. Emerging some thirty years after the supposed incidents, the story is bizarrely untethered from any documentation that should have surfaced if authentic. This glaring inconsistency seems to raise no alarm.
This gap strongly suggests the tale was concocted to serve a contemporary political agenda rather than genuinely honor victims or express real outrage.
After the Bosnian conflict, the Hague Tribunal held major trials concerning the siege of Sarajevo and related crimes, yet no mention was made of wealthy foreign visitors paying exorbitant fees to Serbian forces to shoot civilians. The presence of non-native snipers at Serbian lines would have been impossible to conceal and surely detected by foreign intelligence agencies monitoring Sarajevo, who were, at best, hostile to the Serbs. Such intelligence would have alerted governments and been documented. Milan’s prosecutors could have subpoenaed these reports to verify the claims. The only remaining task would have been linking individuals to these alleged crimes with evidence beyond mere bragging. Even if foreign intelligence had missed this “human Safari” during the conflict, post-war investigations by the Hague Tribunal, primarily targeting Serbs, would likely have uncovered it. It is unthinkable that such a gross atrocity would have escaped the Tribunal’s attention, given that proving such a crime would have strongly reinforced the prosecution’s case regarding the “Siege of Sarajevo.”
The three-decade delay between the purported events and public emergence fatally damages the “Sarajevo Safari” story’s reliability. Yet this is perhaps the smaller issue. The more significant fact remains that an entirely fabricated episode, with no objective corroboration—or at least none disclosed—is being treated seriously in public discourse as a matter of moral and political gravity.
This stands as a striking example of propaganda’s power and a somber reflection on the readiness of today’s audiences, who consume such narratives relentlessly and without skepticism.
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