Rezak Hukanovic

Bosnian Serbs established prisoner-of-war camps to house the Muslims and Croats they expelled from cities such as Prijedor that had been conquered by the Bosnian Serb Army. The international media began to publish reports about these camps, claiming that torture and killings were routine. Rezak Hukanovic, a Bosnian radio announcer, journalist, and poet was ousted from his home in Prijedor in 1992 and sent to the Omarska prisoner-of-war camp. In the following account, which Hukanovic writes in the third-person in order to convey the macabre aspect of his experience, he describes his torture at the hands of Serb guards in the building called The White House. Hukanovic was eventually released from the prison camp Manjaca and fled to Norway.

Wednesday, June 10, [1992], early evening. The interrogators had already left for the day, in the van that took them back and forth from Prijedor [in Northern...