Arlinda Zekaj was murdered on Sunday evening in the village of Vitomirica, near Peja/Pec, shortly after returning from the police station where she reported domestic violence. Three days prior, she had asked the local prosecution to intervene to save her life.
“I hope the day never comes when you and the responsible institutions are forced to account for your actions only after my life has been taken,” Zekaj had written on October 22 in a letter to Lumturije Vucetaj, chief prosecutor of the Peja Basic Prosecution office. The letter called for urgent action against officials she accused of failing to protect her from domestic violence.
Three days later she was murdered with an ax, allegedly by her brother-in-law, who remains at large.
Zekaj is the seventh woman to be murdered by a family member in 2026 in Kosovo.
Kosovo police announced that they received a domestic violence report at around 7 pm on Sunday after which the police interviewed Zekaj and arrested her ex-husband for domestic violence. He was “placed in 48-hour detention. The victim was then taken to her home in the village of Vitomirica voluntarily,” the police statement reads.
“At around 9:10 pm, we were notified that she had been found dead”, the statement continues.
On Monday morning, Zekaj’s lawyer Adelina Shala contradicted the police statement, writing on Facebook that “it wasn’t the victim’s will” to return home. On Sunday evening, Shala accused Kosovo authorities of failing to protect her client, writing that “the state killed Arlinda”.
The prosecutor’s office in Peja/Pec stated in a late night press release that Vucetaj had ordered Zekaj’s letter to be registered for examination by the competent prosecutor, including “an assessment of potential criminal liability for abuse of official position or authority”.
Kosovo’s Chief State Prosecutor requested a detailed report and review on Monday to determine “whether there were institutional or individual failures” and how the victim’s letter was handled.
Kosovo President Justina Shiroka Pula called for “an urgent, comprehensive and impartial investigation. It must be clarified whether all necessary measures were taken to assess the risk and protect her.”
The Collective for Feminist Thought and Action, an activist group, called for a nationwide protest on Wednesday, “as an act of revolt and a final call to protect women’s lives”.
The Kosovo Women’s Network (KWN) said that “the case is particularly concerning given the challenges [Zekaj] had faced regarding custody and contact with her child, as well as the concerns raised about the institutional handling of her case”.
There have been a number of recent murders of women in Kosovo by family members.
On October 9, Nafije Bogujevci and her brother Egzon Bogujevci were shot dead. Nafije’s husband later turned himself in to the police. In late August, two women were allegedly killed by their husbands within days. The first victim was 25 years old and pregnant, the second aged 80. The first was shot, the second beaten to death.
On the last Friday in August, dozens of people marched through Pristina to demand justice for the victims of femicide and to call on authorities to treat gender-based violence in Kosovo as a national emergency.
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