Account of an event · Trnopolje · July 9, 1992
Fikret Hodžić: fifteen-time champion of Yugoslavia killed near his own home in Trnopolje
Fikret Hodžić, a bodybuilder who was champion of Yugoslavia fifteen years in a row and the founder of the first bodybuilding club in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was killed on 9 July 1992 in Trnopolje. On that day Serb soldiers took away his family, and according to the testimony of his wife Suada, the shot was fired by a young man who had previously trained with Fikret. His remains were found in a mass grave in 2009, and he was buried seventeen years after his death.
An athlete from Trnopolje
Fikret Hodžić was born on 26 June 1953 in Kevljani near Prijedor. He practised bodybuilding without a coach, teaching himself and exercising with improvised weights. In 1975 he founded the first bodybuilding club in Bosnia and Herzegovina in Trnopolje. According to the portal genocid.ba, in August of that same year he married Suada, who remained in the sport herself and became an international bodybuilding judge.
From 1976 to 1991, Fikret was champion of Yugoslavia in bodybuilding for fifteen years in a row. In 1981 he won bronze at the World Amateur Championship and silver at the European Championship in the lightweight category. According to genocid.ba, he met Arnold Schwarzenegger at the world championship in Cairo. Fikret and Suada had two children: a daughter, who was fifteen in 1992, and a son, Đemal, who was eleven at the time.
Suada remembers him as a man who never raised his voice: "He didn't know how to be angry, he didn't know how to raise his tone and he didn't know how to hate."
9 July 1992
During the ethnic cleansing of the Prijedor area in 1992, on 9 July Serb soldiers burst into Trnopolje and took Fikret, Suada and their two children out of their house. They kept Fikret at the house, while Suada and the children were allowed to go. She had not gone far when she heard a burst of automatic rifle fire behind her. According to her account, the soldier who let them go threatened to kill her if she turned around.
According to the testimony of Suada Hodžić, the shot was fired by a young man who had previously trained with Fikret and used to come to their house. His name has not been made public. According to genocid.ba, the killing took place about a hundred metres from the house, around noon.
Camp, expulsion and return
According to her own account, Suada hid in a cornfield, and was then taken with the children to the Trnopolje camp and subsequently deported. She lived in exile in Austria and Germany, and later returned to Trnopolje.
The family was struck by another tragedy after the war: their son Đemal, who followed in his father's footsteps and in 1998 became bodybuilding champion of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was killed in 2000 in Sanski Most, at the age of twenty.
Discovery and burial
Fikret Hodžić's remains were found in January 2009 in a mass grave. He was buried on 20 July 2009, seventeen years after he was killed. Arnold Schwarzenegger sent the family his condolences after his death.
Remembrance
In November 2017 the portal Detektor recalled Fikret's killing in the context of the indictment against Ratko Mladić for genocide in Prijedor and other municipalities in 1992. According to genocid.ba, on 11 July 2021 a memorial room dedicated to Fikret Hodžić was opened in Kozarac.