My first client was an elderly Muslim man with half a leg missing. He was shot by a Serb and the injured leg needed amputating. He has been coming since Healing Hands first went to Sarajevo in 1995 and adores Reiki. He has a treatment every week as it provides short-term relief from his pain. Today it is my turn to provide this ease.

Despite his eighty-something years, Amir evidently still believes in the importance of taking great effort to look smart - he is wearing a dark suit, shirt, tie and large hat. On the treatment bed I see there are holes in his jacket, tears in his trousers; his shirt is frayed and he is without socks. Even the soles of his shoes are hanging off.

I learn he lost his son who was arrested at Srebrenica along with most of the male population. Fifteen year old boys were shot and according to eye witnesses children under ten and a baby were also murdered. The infamous massacre was reminiscent of the holocaust where prisoners were taken to the woods and made to dig their own graves before being shot.  The suffering of this proud man can be seen in his eyes; yet his face lights up when he smiles as he does frequently after thanking me for the treatment.

All around the hills of this great city lie white crosses - far more recent than those we see lining the fields of World War Two memorial sites. In fact, they are being added to almost daily because bodies are still being dug up and identified. This is part of an ongoing government pledge to dig up bodies, take them to special identification units where the remains of the conflict's lost dead are identified and their families duly informed.

As if to emphasise the presence of this still-current process, a warm-hearted dark-haired woman I treated on an outreach day had been informed the day before that the bodies of her son and husband, both murdered in the massacre of Srebrenica, had been identified. At last the long wait, for Kadira, now in her early forties, was over and she could bury them and release over a decade's worth of pent-up grief and anger.

She wept as I treated her and smiling  afterwards, thanked me, telling me the Reiki helped her release so much emotion. In fact during my stay she came to me for three further treatments and with the little money she had, she gave a pair of Bosnian slippers as a mark of her thanks. Before I left she asked to be photographed with me and we both have copies to this day.

Sujeman was a young man who, in his final teenage year, had been interned in a concentration camp called Hadzic, near Sarajevo. Making a courageous escape one night in temperatures  of minus 28, he fled through the forest with few clothes to protect him from the merciless cold, but far worse than the freezing weather was around the corner. He was picked up by his captors and when they found him he was tortured and repeatedly raped. Refusing to accept his fate he made a second gutsy dash for freedom and life, this time escaping without recapture. But his suffering - both physical and mental, remains today. A young broken man he is unable to take up work and live in peace. Yet it was evident Reiki sessions (he's been coming for ten years) are a tonic; via the interpreter, we even enjoyed a joke together.

Hasija was a smart girl with a blond bob and pale face, who looked much older than her 28 years, and a heartbreaking sadness overwhelmed me in a way that is not usual when I am treating.

Paralysed down one side of her body, unable to have children and in constant pain, Hasija had been multiply raped by Serbian forces who had arrested her together with her father and sisters.

Her five year old sister was also raped in front of her and her three year old sister went missing that night and has never been found. After the army had savaged her body both inside and out till it could take no more, her father was brought in and shot before her. The depravity defies comprehension and with some Harry Potter magic I wished I could have waved a wand, cried "expeliarmus" and have rid her of such palpable suffering.

I was told she likes Reiki sessions because they needn't involve touching - this is apparently common amongst many rape victims who value Reiki for its lack of physical contact. Reiki, known as bio-energy healing here, is also an accepted practice amongst the healing arts of Bosnian culture. When the Reiki treatment was completed she got up and hugged me. The interpreter commented on the unusualness of this physical gesture and though I couldn't provide the assuagement I desired, there was something profound about this expression. It showed the treatment, no matter how ephemeral, had been a balm with its own intrinsic value.

Sarajevo Fact Box
The siege of Sarajevo lasted four years, from 1992 to 1996. It became the city where Serb snipers continually shot down helpless civilians in the street - between 12,000 and 14,000 deaths occurred including over 3,500 children.

Slobodan Milosevic stirred up ethnic tension under the guise of protecting the Serb minority but citizens of every age and background suffered and the city lost around 60 per cent of its population.

Sarajevowas bombarded with an average of 330 shells a day destroying centuries old architecture including 1,200 mosques, 150 churches, four synagogues and the famous Sarajevo National Library - a building made infamous because it was the last place Archduke Ferdin and of Austria visited before he was assassinated in 1914.

Mass killings occurred at the market place and after a football game. The worst mass killings since World War II took place in the region's concentration camps.

The government has set up special identification units still in operation to identify the lost victims of the concentration camp genocides and there are still many unexploded landmines with mine disposal teams aiming to cover 2.4 million square metres during 2009.