‘Surviving the Omarska Hell’: Ex-Detainee Remembers Six Months in Camps
Listening to reports from other towns in Bosnia, he hoped the war would stop soon. However, in the conflict that soon spread to Prijedor, Hukanovic and his son were arrested and taken from their home to the infamous Bosnian Serb-run Omarska detention camp on May 30, 1992.
He has never figured out why his young son was also arrested.
He recalls "horrible images" in the camp, including, "watching a child dying in his father's arms. As I always say, my child luckily survived, but some children did not, some parents did not," he recalls.
Hukanovic never forgot the sight of his neighbours returning from beatings with broken limbs.
A Bosniak in a wheelchair visits the site during the 20th anniversary of the closing of the camps at Omarska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 2012. Photo: EPA/STR
Bosniak prisoner writes the letter in the Serb held prisoners camp Omarska near Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, August 1992. Photo: EPA/STRINGER
His most painful memory is of a professor from Kozarac, who spent a night on a wooden stool because he could not lie down because of his injuries.
"The examination rooms were on the floor above. Beatings took place on the floor above. Then he said: 'That is my son.' He'd recognized his voice. He saw his body next to the house the following day," Hukanovic says.
He remembers the time in the camp up to August 1992, before his transfer from Omarska, when he witnessed torture and stared death in the face.
He says he could not think about anything else but the smell of blood and cries of pain caused by the horrible mistreatment taking place in the interrogation rooms.
"What was in the heart of those men, the amount of hate that made them torture people in that way...
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