Drago Hedl

Drago Hedl (born 24 January 1950) is a Croatian investigative journalist, screenwriter, and novelist.

Drago Hedl was born in Osijek and became a professional journalist in 1980.

He was an Editor-in-Chief of Glas Slavonije, an Osijek-based daily, from 1986 to 1991, and a war correspondent for Slobodna Dalmacija, a Split-based daily, from 1991 to 1994. Following that, he joined IWPR's London-based War Report and then spent several years leading training programs for young journalists throughout the Balkan region. Hedl later wrote for Feral Tribune, and Novi list. Hedl was a long-time collaborator of Radio Free Europe. He was also the recipient of the Order of Stjepan Radić in 2011 for his "contribution to the fight for human rights, the promotion of democracy and the discovery of truth" and the Otokar Keršovani Prize from the Croatian Journalists' Association for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism in 2015.

"Drago Hedl has endured death threats, government litigation, beatings by local politicians and army soldiers, among others, and verbal abuse for his reporting of war crimes in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. His struggle against ultra-nationalism, wartime propaganda and hate speech, and for tolerance and the rule of law, has led to accusations of treason. His support for complying with demands to send indicted war criminals to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague has further provoked his opponents. Nothing, however, has deterred him from solid and objective coverage of a sensitive topic in his homeland."

His crime thriller Izborna Šutnja, set in Croatia and Ukraine, was adapted for television in 2021 as Šutnja and streamed in the U.S. on MHz Choice under the series title The Silence.

Personal life

Hedl has been married for eight years to Ivana, a fellow journalist, and had one son, Matija. In 2018 his 44-year-old son Matija, a biochemist and researcher at Yale University in the United States, took his own life. In December of 2024, Hedl wrote a book dedicated to him "Matija".

He holds a bachelor's degree in Yugoslav literature.