Who is Radovan Karadzic?
He was accused of masterminding massacres that the UN war crimes tribunal described as “scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history.” Monday’s capture of Radovan Karadzic, the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs and one of the world’s most-wanted men, ended a 13-year manhunt for a genocide suspect said to have resorted to elaborate disguises to elude authorities. The arrest announcement from Serbian President Boris Tadic’s office was stunning: although authorities had been said to be closing in on Gen. Ratko Mladic, who was also indicted in 1995 for genocide and crimes against humanity in Bosnia, Karadzic’s whereabouts had been a mystery for years – and many had all but given up hope of him ever being brought to justice. Karadzic’s reported hide-outs included Serbian Orthodox monasteries and refurbished mountain caves in remote eastern Bosnia. Over the years, newspaper reports said he occasionally disguised himself as a priest by shaving off his silver mane and donn
Radovan Karadzic is the former political leader of the Bosnian Serbs during the war in the 1990s. He was born in 1945 in Savnik, Yugoslavia, in what is now the Republic of Montenegro. His father, Vuko, was a Chetnik rebel who fought the Nazis during the second world war and later Yugoslavia’s leader, Tito. He was in prison for much of Karadzic’s childhood. Karadzic moved to Sarajevo in 1960 where he trained in medicine, specialising in psychiatry. He saw himself as part of the intelligenstia and wrote poetry. He was a psychologist for the Red Star Belgrade football team before entering politics.
Updated on 22 July 2008 By Carl Dinnen From the siege of Sarajevo to the massacres at Srebrenica, the arrest of Radovan Karadzic is a significant moment in Balkan history. But why? Watch the report Before entering politics, Karadzic had worked as a doctor and psychologist in Sarajevo. When Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia, Karadzic led the Bosnian Serbs to their own republic in 1992. With the notorious General Ratko Mladic, Karadzic systematically removed Bosnia’s Muslims and Croats from Serb-held areas of Bosnia, giving the world the euphemism “ethnic cleansing”. Karadzic was responsible for holding the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, under siege. From his Bosnian parliament in Pale, he resisted every attempt at peace brokered by international mediators. ITN journalists discovered prison camps full of the ill and malnourished – the images, which were sent around the globe, evoked the work of the Nazis. Karadzic’s trial will pivot around the massacre of thousands of young men in
