BOSNIA WAR CRIMES
BELGRADE : Bosnian Serb wartime president Radovan Karadzic, indicted for genocide in the Bosnia war, was captured in disguise near Belgrade after over a decade on the run and had been working as a doctor, Serbian officials said yesterday.
The arrest on Monday of Karadzic, who is held responsible for the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995, was a condition for Serbian progress towards European Union membership.
He is the most prominent Balkan war crimes suspect arrested since late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic was sent to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague on genocide charges in 2001, leaving only two suspects at large.
The officials said Karadzic was caught while moving from one Belgrade suburb to another. They showed reporters a photograph of an unrecognisable Karadzic, now 63, with a long, white beard, flowing hair and thick glasses.
''He happily, freely walked around the city,'' Serbia's war crimes prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic, said. ''Even his landlords were unaware of his identity.''
Karadzic had wanted Serb areas of Bosnia to be linked to Serbia and other areas dominated by Serbs at a time when Milosevic was fanning nationalism in Serbia.
The trained psychiatrist worked for a private clinic, posing as a specialist in alternative medicine under the assumed name of Dragan Dabic. His last known address was in New Belgrade, a sprawling suburb of concrete tower blocks.
Serbian officials said Karadzic had been served with an indictment and his lawyers had three days to appeal. He is expected to be transferred to The Hague shortly after.
When news of his arrest spread, people in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo poured onto the streets in celebration. His troops shelled Sarajevo mercilessly in a 43-month siege that lasted throughout the 1992-95 Bosnian war and killed some 11,000 people. REUTERS
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