Shooting in East Sarajevo: Manhunt for Djordje Zdrale
Police are hunting Djordje Zdrale after a drive-by shooting in East Sarajevo wounded Kosta Pandurevic, whose two-year-old child was in the car at the time.
The East Sarajevo Police Administration has launched a manhunt for Djordje Zdrale, a man who spent two decades behind bars for killing the chief of the Republika Srpska Police Administration, on suspicion that he fired at Kosta Pandurevic from a moving vehicle on Sunday evening. The shooting took place on a residential street, and the wounded man’s two-year-old child was in the car when the bullets hit it. For Belgrade, this is not a distant regional crime story: it touches the security picture of an entity with which Serbia maintains its closest institutional and economic ties in the region, and it involves a name tied to one of the most serious postwar killings in Republika Srpska.
According to a statement from the East Sarajevo Police Administration, the report reached the East New Sarajevo Police Station on Sunday, August 2, at around 6:15 p.m. Police classified the case as attempted aggravated murder.
“It was reported to the East New Sarajevo Police Station yesterday, on 02.08.2026, at around 18:15, that a firearm was used on Spasovdanska Street, in that a person with the initials D.Z., firing from a vehicle in motion, shot at a person with the initials K.P., causing him bodily injury.”
The wounded man is Kosta Pandurevic, hit by at least two bullets and taken to the “Srbija” hospital in East Sarajevo. At the moment of the attack he was in an Audi A6, on the street where the cafe “Njuz” is located, and his two-year-old child was in the vehicle with him. Police officers carried out the scene investigation in the presence of the on-duty prosecutor from the District Public Prosecutor’s Office in East Sarajevo. According to initial, unconfirmed reports from the field, the shots were fired from an armored Audi A8 with foreign license plates.
Who is Djordje Zdrale?
Zdrale was sentenced in 2010 to 20 years in prison for the murder of the chief of the Republika Srpska Police Administration, committed on June 7, 2000, in Bijeljina. The victim was Ljubisa Savic Mauzer, a case followed for years by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in which the person who ordered the killing was never established. Zdrale served his sentence and was released in 2022.
That was not his first conviction. In 1996 he was sentenced to seven years in prison for the murder of Goran Batinic. He also stood trial for participating in the murder of a married couple, the Todorovics, but was acquitted of those charges.
An alliance that broke down a few months ago
Pandurevic belongs to a younger generation and is known to police for armed attacks. After Zdrale’s release from prison, Pandurevic became his driver and close associate, a relationship that ended a few months ago.
His name has surfaced in police files before:
- in July 2023 he was arrested on suspicion of shooting and wounding Adi Nukic with a pistol in East Sarajevo
- in late 2025 someone opened fire on him in a parking lot, with Irnes Hubijar named as the suspect
- after Sunday’s attack he posted a photo of himself from the hospital
This is, then, the third time in three years that the same name has turned up on one side or the other of an armed confrontation in the same city. It is less a surprise than a chronicle repeating itself on the same streets with the same people.
Mayor calls for a swift response from the judiciary
The mayor of East Sarajevo, Ljubisa Cosic, said on August 3 that the incident had unsettled residents but that the city’s security situation was not under threat. He said police had done their part and that the matter was now in the hands of the judiciary.
“If someone needs to go to prison, they have to go to prison, and they cannot be allowed to endanger the safety of citizens.”
Cosic also called for closer cooperation between local, entity and state institutions to prevent criminal groups from striking again. That shifted the incident on Spasovdanska Street from a crime blotter item to an institutional debate over who bears responsibility for repeat offenders.
The District Prosecutor’s Office in East Sarajevo suspects Zdrale of attempted aggravated murder, and the manhunt is still underway. Police say the work of documenting the case has not yet been completed.
