The Serbian high command that organized the human safaris in Bosnia was a CIA agent

PASCUAL SERRANO

The reports emerging about the “human safaris” in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War point to Jovica Stanisic as “the Serbian officer in charge of organizing the trips for the millionaire snipers.” In fact, lthe investigation by the Milan Justice systemand Stanisic as coordinator of these trips under the guise of “hunting trips".

The Italian press has revealed that the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office is opening an investigation into the snipers who, between 1992 and 1996, murdered more than 11.000 civilians in the besieged city of Sarajevo. From the hills, the snipers fired on passersby who had no choice but to walk down that street and risk being killed.

According to the leaked information, millionaires in that country were paying between 80.000 and 100.000 euros to travel in a flight from Trieste to Belgrade of the Serbian company Aviogenex, to serve as snipers against civilians.

The Italian writer and journalist Ezio Gavazzeni has filed a new complaint with the Italian magistrates. Gavazzeni andThey are working with lawyer Nicola Brigida and former judge Guido Salviniu and say they have gathered several witnesses and have concluded that Jovica Stanisic “played a key role in the service”.

But who exactly is Jovica Stanisic? The media are simply stating that he is the former head of Serbia's State Security Directorate (SDB), and that he was sentenced in 2023 to 15 years in prison for crimes in seven municipalities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But if we investigate a little further and examine the trial against him, we discover that behind Milosevic's high-ranking position, what was actually happening was a CIA agent.

The documentation shown at his trial, as revealed Los Angeles Times on March 1, 2009 He explained that, “for eight years, Stanisic was the CIA’s main contact in Belgrade. In secret meetings held on boats and in safe houses along the Sava River, he shared details about the inner workings of the Milosevic regime. He provided information on the whereabouts of NATO hostages, assisted CIA agents in searching for mass graves, and helped the agency establish a network of secret bases in Bosnia.”

Stanisic was recruited by CIA agent William Lofgren. The two spies forged a clandestine relationship that remained hidden.

The truth came to light when the Serbian man appeared before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The CIA presented the tribunal with a classified document detailing Stanisic's contributions and attesting to his valuable role. The document remained sealed, but sources from The Los Angeles Times They revealed its contents.

As revealed during the 2021 trial sessions, Stanisic joined the CIA as an agent in 1991, a year before the siege of Sarajevo and the sniper attacks began. In fact, as reported by the N1info channel, CNN's local affiliate in the former Yugoslavia, in 1993 guided the CIA to find mass graves in Bosnia.

Agent Lofgren, who was retired at the time of the trial, said the agency drafted the document to demonstrate "that this supposedly evil person did a lot of good," referring to his cooperation with U.S. intelligence.

Other CIA agents who served in the region defended Satanisic as one of their own and stated that they never saw him involved in war crimes. On the contrary, they considered him a key ally in a rapidly spiraling situation.

The former British ambassador to Serbia, Sir Ivor Roberts, who served in Belgrade from 1994 to 1997, testified in 2019 at the International Court of Justice in The Hague that the former head of Serbia's State Security Service (SDB), Jovica Stanišić, was a "secret agent of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)." It was reported by none other than Radio Slobodna Europe, the radio station created for that region by the United States government as part of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

In the trial against Stanisic, Ambassador Roberts had to appear as a defense witness, when he suggested that the information that Stanisic was a "secret CIA agent," published in his 2016 book, was true. "Conversations with Milosevic"It was reliable.

When asked by the prosecutor about the origin and veracity of this information, Roberts replied that the British government "did not allow him to talk about these things" and that he had been warned "recently" that he had to respect the Official Secrets Act.

When asked what the British government knew about Stanišić, the witness said he did not want to go into details, as a condition of his testimony was that he not be questioned about intelligence gathering. However, the British ambassador pointed out that London had approved the content of his book, which detailed the Serbian's role as a CIA agent, thus implying UK confirmation of his claim.

Stanisic's complicity with the CIA led him to contribute to the release of 388 NATO soldiers who had been taken hostage, stripped of their uniforms, and tied to trees as human shields against NATO bombing raids. In his own written account, Stanisic claimed to have negotiated the release "with the support of the agency's leadership."

At that time, CIA Director John M. Deutch had a close relationship with the man now under investigation for organizing the human safaris in Sarajevo. invited to CIA headquarters in 1996And an itinerary of the visit indicates that Stanisic received a warm welcome. This occurred just after the siege of Sarajevo, where the sniper massacres had taken place.

The Serbian spy chief was taken to listen to jazz at the Blues Alley club in Georgetown, Virginia, and driven to Maryland's east coast for a bird hunt. Deutch even gifted Stanisic a 1937 Parker shotgun, a classic weapon admired by collectors.

At the International Criminal Tribunal, the CIA found itself in a difficult position with one of its agents accused of war crimes. For this reason, the agency declined to comment on the document. Because its contents are classified, the letter could only be considered by the tribunal in a private session. Court officials indicated that it was unclear whether the document would be of significant use to Stanisic's defense, or whether it would be used primarily to request a lighter sentence if he were found guilty.

Perhaps his collaboration with the CIA was indeed useful to him, and for that reason, on May 30, 2013, the court acquitted him of his participation in the wars. The problem is that the verdict was overturned on December 15, 2015, after a successful appeal by the prosecution. A new trial began in 2017, and in 2021 he was found guilty and sentenced to 12 years in prison, which was later increased to 15. A life sentence had been sought. Last July he was transferred to Germany to serve his sentence.

In conclusion, much will be written about those tremendous "safaris" of European billionaires who paid vast sums of money to go and murder civilians in Sarajevo. And much will be written about the Serbian army's involvement, but it seems that the detail being overlooked is that those Serbian officers who organized the hunts were acting more at the behest of the CIA than at Milošević's behest.

Pascual Serrano He is a journalist and writer. His last book is "Forbidden to doubt. The ten weeks in which Ukraine changed the world”