My Missing Husband: How Bosnia’s War Devastated an Albanian Family

Fadila Huduti last saw her husband Bajrus at a police station in the town of Doboj in northern Bosnia on May 5, 1992, after the married couple were arrested at their house by Serb soldiers.

"By a cruel twist of fate, it happened on our 20th wedding anniversary. We got married on May 5, 1972," Huduti said.

Bosnian Serb forces had seized control over Doboj two days earlier and the Hudutis, both Albanians, had stayed inside their house two kilometres from the town to keep themselves safe from possible attack.

On May 5, Fadila Huduti saw several armed soldiers on a truck in front of her house and a tank in the street.

"When the soldiers came, we climbed up to the attic. We heard them break into the house and rifle through our stuff," she recalled.

"The entrance to the attic was in the bathroom. They fired shots from there. A bullet singed my face a bit. Then we came down from the attic. The soldiers hit my husband several times in his stomach and face."

She was 39 and her husband was ten years older; they had a seven-year-old daughter who was due to start elementary school in September that year. Luckily for them, the child was with Fadila Huduti's parents when the soldiers arrived.

"Our neighbour, the late Vid Okolic, asked the soldiers why they were arresting us, since all the people in that neighbourhood had good relations with each other," she said.

She recognised one of the soldiers - a Serb called Nikola Jorgic: "He was a customer at our shop and I could call him a friend of my husband's. We were taken to the Doboj police station in a black VW Golf with no licence plates."

At the police station, she was separated from her husband in and interrogated about whether they had hidden weapons.

She...