Kjašif Smajlović: the journalist who did not leave Zvornik and was killed in his newspaper office

A journalist from Zvornik

Kjašif Smajlović was the correspondent of the Sarajevo daily Oslobođenje for the Zvornik region. He had worked in journalism for a long time: in the 1960s he was the first editor and a journalist of the Zvornik newspaper Glas sa Drine. Before the war his wife urged him to leave Zvornik, and colleagues also begged him to go. He refused and stayed in the town.

The fall of Zvornik, 8 April 1992

On 8 April 1992, Serb police, military (JNA) and paramilitary forces attacked Zvornik, partly from the territory of Serbia, and took the town within a single day. Many civilians died in the attack. According to the portal genocid.ba, Smajlović sent a report from Zvornik that day about the attacks on the town.

The last report

Smajlović dictated his last report by telephone to Sevleta Ahmedinović, the secretary of the Oslobođenje regional office in Tuzla. The text was published on 9 April 1992. That morning he told her: "I am afraid, Sele, that they are coming for me too." When she asked him why he had not left, he answered that he was a journalist. According to genocid.ba, he said during the conversation that he could hear their footsteps, after which the line was cut.

The killing in the office

Kjašif Smajlović was killed in the Oslobođenje correspondent's office in Zvornik. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), this happened on 9 April 1992, when he was 52 years old.

According to the testimony of people who were hiding in the basement, relayed by his brother Sakib Smajlović, three armed men burst into the office. The witnesses heard him plead with them, saying that he had children. According to Sakib, the attackers struck him on the head with a typewriter and shot him, then dragged his body out and left it lying in front of the office door. A neighbor testified that the body was dragged out of the office by the legs. The identity of the attackers has never been established.

Smajlović is considered the first of the 67 journalists killed in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina – among them 56 citizens of BiH and 11 foreigners.

The search and identification

For years the family searched in vain for his body in mass graves in the Podrinje region. Only after 24 years, in June 2016, were his remains identified in the Kazanbašča mass grave near Zvornik; the family learned of this in September 2016. The remains were identified by Nedim Smajlović, who travelled from Austria.

The autopsy showed that he had been tortured before his death and had gunshot wounds to the chest and pelvis. According to the family, his skull had been smashed. His brother Sakib described the shattered skull, broken fingers and five to six bullets in the area of the heart and chest.

Remembrance and impunity