His young life was violently stopped by an enemy shrapnel on Tuesday, the 1st of August 1995. He fought for his life for 13 days, but did not manage to win that battle. He was only 24 years old.
He was engaged into comic books and started to practice journalism at an early age (he has worked on Radio Sarajevo as 15 years old). He wrote about film, comics, art and culture in general in many magazines, weekly and daily newspapers. He was a permanent associate of the Independent Radio Zid, and before the war started, he had occasionally worked on Treci Program of TV Sarajevo and programs of Radio Sarajevo. He was in Sarajevo during the war. After demobilization from the Army of BiH, he edited the section of culture in the magazine ‘Dani’.
He had launched a culture magazine ‘Fantom Slobode’ with Semezdin Mehmedinovic, in which he was a deputy chief editor. He wrote short stories and screenplays. Two novels, unfinished, remained in his manuscript.
He died on the 13th of August 1995 from gunshot wounds – as a civilian victim of one of the many shelling in Sarajevo.
Zaimovic was son of painter Mehmed Zaimovic (1938–2011) and his wife Asida. The Belgian comic book artist Hermann Huppen dedicated his 1995 book Sarajevo Tango to Zaimovic’s memory. The American graphic novel author Joe Kubert has also dedicated his Fax from Sarajevo to Karim Zaimovic.
