The public prosecutor's office in Milan has opened an investigation into claims that Italian citizens travelled to Bosnia-Herzegovina on sniper safaris during the war in the early 1990s.
Italians and others are alleged to have paid large sums to shoot at civilians in the besieged city of Sarajevo.
The Milan complaint was filed by journalist and novelist Ezio Gavazzeni, who describes a manhunt by very wealthy people with a passion for weapons who paid to be able to kill defenceless civilians from Serb positions in the hills around Sarajevo.
Different rates were charged to kill men, women or children, according to some reports.
More than 11,000 people died during the brutal four-year siege of Sarajevo.
Yugoslavia was torn apart by war, and the city was surrounded by Serb forces and subjected to constant shelling and sniper fire.
Similar allegations about human hunters from abroad have been made several times over the years, but the evidence gathered by Gavazzeni, which includes the testimony of a Bosnian military intelligence officer, is now being examined by Italian counter-terrorism prosecutor Alessandro Gobbis.
The charge is murder.
The Bosnian officer revealed that his colleagues found out about the so-called safaris in late 1993 and passed on information to Italy's Sismi military intelligence in early 1994.
According to Gavazzeni, many participated in the practice with Italians reportedly paying up to €100,000 for these horrific experiences. The implications of these findings have raised serious moral questions about the behaviors exhibited during the Bosnian conflict.
Gavazzeni highlighted a particularly notable incident where the late Russian nationalist writer Eduard Limonov was filmed shooting into Sarajevo while being shown positions by convicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic.
Italy's prosecutor's office is working to identify witnesses in the case and ascertain the extent to which these actions can be prosecuted.
