Doctor Eso: A Razor Blade, a Match and a Saved Arm in the Omarska Camp

A Physician from Prijedor

Dr. Esad Sadiković, whom people called Eso, worked as a physician in Prijedor, including at the Prijedor hospital. In 1992 he was detained in the Omarska camp in the Prijedor municipality, where the camp was guarded by the camp's guard service.

An Arm from Palm to Elbow

In his testimony, Drago Perković states that he too was a detainee in Omarska. According to him, a wound on his arm became infected within a few days; the arm turned black and swollen from the palm to the elbow, and pus oozed day and night.

A fellow detainee whom Perković refers to only by the nickname Buraz, according to the testimony, persuaded a guard to take him to Dr. Sadiković and went along with him. As Perković describes it, the way led them past the restaurant and a water tap to an improvised clinic.

According to Perković's testimony, Dr. Sadiković performed the procedure without permission and without any instruments. He washed the wound under running water, squeezed out the pus, and with a razor blade, which he had first disinfected in the flame of a match, removed a thin strip of tissue. One detainee held Perković during this in case he fainted, and the physician begged him not to scream. He then bandaged the wound and advised him to keep it exposed to the air. As Perković writes, at parting he told him: "you will survive... if anyone..."

Perković states that the arm then healed and stopped being black. The circumstances of his arrival in Omarska and his further fate remain unknown in this text.

Taken Away in August 1992

Drago Perković survived. Dr. Esad Sadiković did not. In August 1992, at dawn, a guard ordered him to pack his belongings and took him away. Former camp detainee Nusret Sivac testified about this before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Stakić case: the detainees stood up and thanked him for everything he had done for them – "Thank you doctor for everything you've done." Sivac understood this taking away as a sign that the doctor would be killed. After that, all trace of him in the camp was lost.

According to the Institute for Genocide Research Canada, Dr. Sadiković was executed on 5 August 1992, and his remains were found in a cave near Sanski Most. The same source states that the remains of Dr. Esad Sadiković were buried in Prijedor on 29 July 2007.

In 2015, a defence witness in the proceedings against Ratko Mladić before the ICTY confirmed that Dr. Esad Sadiković, his former colleague from the Prijedor hospital, had been killed.

No one has so far been convicted for his death.