The Special Department for Corruption, Organised and Inter-Cantonal Crime of the Supreme Court of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) has confirmed an indictment against prosecutor Jasminka Knežević on suspicion of disclosing official secrets.
The prosecutor from the Sarajevo Cantonal Prosecutor’s Office is alleged to have, in May 2025, used TikTok and WhatsApp to send a third party documents from a criminal case she was handling, which were classified as official secrets.
According to the statement, Knežević is accused of sending photographs of sections of documentation prepared by the Intelligence-Security Agency of BiH, marked “confidential”, as well as parts of a witness interview record from the investigation. She allegedly did so despite knowing the information was legally classified as an official secret and that she was not authorised to share it.
The offence carries a potential prison sentence of up to ten years. Because of the investigation in this case, Knežević was suspended on 5 June 2025 by the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC).
She has previously been disciplined on three occasions, as reported by the Centre for Investigative Reporting (CIN).
She was disciplined in 2017 and 2020 with salary reductions after recording that she had completed hundreds of cases, even though this was not true. She was first punished while working as an expert associate at the Orašje Municipal Court, and the second time as a prosecutor in the Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor’s Office. For the offense in the Municipal Court in Orašje, she’s got a 20% pay cut for three months – about BAM 720, and for the offense in the Cantonal Prosecutor’s Office, a 50% pay cut for six months – about BAM 7,200.
Prosecutor Knežević was sanctioned for the third time in 2022 for entering plea agreements with five persons without the knowledge of the chief prosecutor, and for delaying six criminal cases unjustifiably by failing to act on the prosecutor’s requests to submit a response to the complaints about the suspension or non-conduct of the investigation.
She was sanctioned by a 50% pay cut for one year and was ordered to attend criminal law training for at least three semesters on “Case law of the Supreme Court of FBiH”, “Plea Agreement”, and “Professional Ethics”.
Knežević tried to reduce the sentence with appeals, claiming that at the time at issue, there was the coronavirus pandemic and she was overloaded with the bulk of criminal cases, plus she was covering the workload of other colleagues. Her appeal was rejected.
