Karadzic: Behind the beard hid the angel of death

Europe's most wanted man is behind bars after being arrested travelling quietly by bus on his way to the Belgrade suburbs, writes Phil Cain

WHEN it finally happened, it was an anticlimax. Instead of a shoot-out in the mountains, or a door-smashing dawn raid on a secret hideaway, Europe's most wanted man was picked up on the No 83 bus en route to the Belgrade suburb of Batajnica.

No-one on the bus, and neither the staff nor patients of his holistic surgery in the district of Novi Belgrade, suspected the heavily bearded, bespectacled, 63-year-old "Dr Dragan Dabic" of being the wartime leader of Bosnia's Serbs. But when the secret policemen approached, he quietly admitted he was Radovan Karadzic, the first president of the republic of Srpska.

This is a man who now faces 11 counts of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and other atrocities committed between 1992 and 1996.

Karadzic's only comment at a public hearing yesterday was that it was a "farce". And, on the face of it, he has some reason to be cocky, managing to elude capture by the international community for 12 years, having gone underground a year after his indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in July 1995.

For the last four of these years at least he has been moving freely around Belgrade, rather than being holed up in a bleak mountain hideaway in eastern Bosnia, or languishing in an Orthodox monastery, as many liked to imagine him. He even dared put himself in the public eye, as a regular contributor to Healthy Life magazine, according to its editor.

But the crimes which led to the absurdities of his life on the run lack any shred of humour or bravado. As well as two counts of genocide, he is accused of five counts of crimes against humanity; three of violations of the laws or customs of war; and one of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war.

Most of the charges relate to his part in sanctioning the relentless shelling and sniping of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, between 1992 and 1996, and the murder of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995 by forces led by Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, who remains at large.

Some say that Mladic, who had fallen out with Karadzic at the time of Srebrenica massacre, was acting on orders directly from Belgrade, rather than ones from the old Tito-era spa town of Pale, which was Karadzic's stronghold. But wherever the orders came from, it cannot be denied that the slaughter happened on Karadzic's watch.

Throughout, Karadzic provided vocal support for his army's long and bloody siege of Sarajevo.

During that siege, Bosnian Serb troops starved, sniped and bombarded the city centre, operating from strongholds in Pale and Vraca high above the city and controlling nearly all roads in and out.

Inhabitants were kept alive by a thin lifeline of food aid and supplies provided by UN donors and peacekeepers. Walking down the street to shop for groceries, or driving down a main road that became known as "Sniper Alley", was a risk to their lives.

The siege was not officially over until February 1996. An estimated 10,000 people died.

By the war's end in late 1995, an estimated 250,000 people were dead and another 1.8 million driven from their homes.

The actual day of his arrest is disputed, with his lawyers claiming it was on Friday and the Serbian government prosecutor saying it was Monday evening. This perhaps points to some level of confusion within the government.

Some wonder if Karadzic's arrest came now because of the formation of a pro-EU coalition on 24 June led by the Democrat Party of president Boris Tadic. A spokesman denied this, saying "it was purely for investigative reasons" that the date was chosen. But, whatever the reality, he had little alternative other than to say this. To admit otherwise would suggest that previous Serbian governments had deliberately concealed Karadzic – as many, including ICTY's former head, Carla del Ponte, long maintained.

Born in 1945 in northern Montenegro, a former Yugoslav state which specialises in romantic national heroes, Karadzic moved with his family to Sarajevo when he was 15. There, he went on to study medicine and then specialised in psychiatry, with scholarships taking him to Zagreb, Belgrade and Columbia University in the US.

His privileged education, poetry and introduction of group therapy earned him a degree of celebrity. But his political career only really began in 1990 when the Bosnian Serbs were crying out for a national leader to stand up and confront the newly crowned national leaders of the Bosnian Croats and Muslims. Few thought he had the political skills to survive in the job for long, but his lack of scruples and talent for propaganda proved popular. A typical line was to describe Croats as having a "inferiority complex" and that Bosnian Muslims were "Turks".

By the early Nineties, his critics were proved right, and he was a spent force, with many of his compatriots shaking their heads at the mention of his name. He often slept until noon and spent the rest of the day in a dressing gown. His wife took over the job of co-ordinating humanitarian assistance and his 18-year-old daughter became his press secretary, while he became head of two companies racketeering imports and exports from Bosnia.

His popularity among Serbs rose again only after peace came with the Dayton Accord in 1995 and he was excluded from politics. In "ethnically cleansed" cities of Bosnia posters appeared carrying his picture and with the slogan: "Do not touch him! He means peace!"

It remains to be seen if the almost unrecognisable man found on the No 83 bus will once again be able to stir Serbian national fervour to serve his personal ends from the dock in the courtroom in The Hague.

Will Mladic be next in line?

THE capture of Radovan Karadzic raises the question of whether his arch ally, General Ratko Mladic, could soon be in detention too.

The former career military officer was Karadzic's army chief throughout the 1992-95 Bosnian war and is wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

He was indicted in 1995 for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in connection with, among other events, the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of about 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995, the worst atrocity in Europe since the Second World War.

At the end of the Bosnian war, Mladic returned to Belgrade, where he enjoyed the support and protection of the late Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic.

He lived openly in the city – visiting public places, eating in expensive restaurants and even attending football matches until Milosevic was arrested, going underground in 2001.

According to Nato and Serb prosecutors, Mladic showed up in his old bunker in Bosnia in 2004 to drink with army friends and lived in the drab high-rise New Belgrade suburb of the capital until early 2006. Rumours of his imminent arrest have flared often, most notably on the tenth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, the tenth anniversary of the Dayton agreements which ended the civil war, and every time Serbia faced a milestone in its negotiations with the European Union on closer ties.

Now aged 66, his whereabouts are unknown, but it is believed that he could be hiding in Serbia with the help of hard-liners in the police and military and Serb loyalists. In 2005, it was reported that Mladic had demanded more than £2 million in "compensation" to be given to his family and bodyguards if he gave himself up to the tribunal.

Described by Interpol as of stocky build and with a "highly coloured complexion", Mladic is said to be in poor health.

In June 2006, there were reports that he had suffered a third stroke and that he had low chances of survival.

"That Ratko Mladic is still at liberty is a major obstacle to full accountability for the genocide at Srebrenica," said Richard Dicker, the director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Programme.

"The European Union must insist that Serbia surrender him."