Kjasif Smajlovic, local correspondent for national daily Oslobodjenje, was murdered on April 9, 1992, in Zvornik, a city on the eastern border of Bosnia and Herzegovina, when Serbian military and paramilitary forces seized control of the town. As of October 2024, no one has been prosecuted for his murder.
He dictated his last report on the day of his death to a secretary in the newspaper’s regional office, saying that he was afraid. “They are coming for me. I can hear their steps; they are coming here. I’m afraid that this is my last report.”
Smajlovic, 52, was murdered while reporting from Zvornik for Oslobodjenje, Bosnia’s leading daily newspaper based in Sarajevo, the capital, during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, in which the country’s ethnic factions — Muslim Bosniaks, Catholic Croats, and Orthodox Christian Serbs — fought for control after the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Smajlovic’s remains were discovered in 2016 in a mass grave near Zvornik. Family members told media that the identification process revealed severe trauma to Smajlovic’s body: his skull was shattered to such an extent that parts could not be reassembled, and the upper jaw was missing. The autopsy determined that the journalist had been tortured before being killed, with gunshot wounds found in his chest and hip bone.
Known as the first journalist of Zvornik, Smajlovic began writing articles for local papers in high school. In the 1960s, he became the first editor and journalist of Glas sa Drine, a newly founded paper in Zvornik. He later joined Oslobodjenje as a correspondent covering the Zvornik region.