Karadzic’s capture reveals New Age guru who hid in plain sight
By Dusan Stojanovic
- ASSOCIATED PRESS
Updated: 07/23/08 6:49 AM
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- Photos show Radovan Karadzic in 1995 and after the transformation that allowed him to evade arrest for 10 years.
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BELGRADE, Serbia — For a decade, the world’s most-wanted war crimes fugitive displayed a talent for eluding international justice. His secret? Hide in plain sight.
In a ruse worthy of any thriller, Radovan Karadzic transformed himself from a leader instantly recognizable by his famous shock of salt-and-pepper hair into a man resembling a New Age mystic, with a flowing white beard and black robe.
Believed to be protected by a coterie of ultra-nationalists, the former Bosnian Serb strongman— a psychiatrist who received training in the United States — worked at an alternative medicine clinic in Belgrade.
Karadzic’s disguise was so effective that prosecutors say he walked freely around town without being noticed and even his landlords didn’t know his true identity.
A photograph displayed by prosecutors at a news conference Tuesday showed a gaunt elderly man unrecognizable from the robust warlord who strutted brashly before his troops during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.
That life on the run ended abruptly Monday with Karadzic’s capture — an arrest made possible by the election of a new pro-Western government that tightened the dragnet around the war crimes suspect.
Many observers have long suspected that recently fallen Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, a nationalist with close ties to Karadzic during the Bosnian war, had shielded him from arrest.
Karadzic’s capture has broad political implications — for the future of the U. N. war crimes tribunal, eventual closure of the cycle of Balkan blood feuds and for Serbia’s fitful journey out of international isolation.
The wartime Bosnian Serb leader stands accused of genocide for masterminding the deadly siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, Europe’s worst carnage since the end of World War II.
The fugitive had been masquerading as an expert in “human quantum energy” using the fake name “D. D. David” printed on his business card. The initials apparently stood for Dragan Dabic, an alias authorities said he used.
He even had his own Web site — www.psy-help-energy.com — and gave lectures before hundreds of people on alternative medicine. The site displays pictures of metallic bullet-shaped amulets and Orthodox crosses with wires running out of them. Television footage provided by a local station to Associated Press Television News shows Karadzic sitting on a panel at a medical conference, glancing nervously at the cameraman next to him — another glimpse into his knife’s-edge life of hiding in plain view.
Using his alias, Karadzic regularly contributed to the Serbian alternative medicine magazine Healthy Life. Goran Kojic, its editor, said he was stunned when he saw the photo of Karadzic on television and realized the bizarre truth.
“It never even occurred to me that this man with a long white beard and hair was Karadzic,” Kojic said. “He was eloquent and a bit strange, like a true bohemian.”
Karadzic’s whereabouts had been a mystery since he went on the run in 1998, with his hideouts reportedly including monasteries and mountain caves in remote eastern Bosnia. The United States offered a $5 million reward for his arrest.
Prosecutors said Karadzic was arrested while waiting for a bus in a grim part of Belgrade known as a nationalist stronghold. Authorities refused to reveal more details, saying Karadzic’s movements were being analyzed and would be kept secret.
In Sarajevo, Bosnian Muslims rushed into the streets Monday night to celebrate the news of Karadzic’s arrest.
“We have been waiting for 13 years, and we lost hope. Now we know — there is justice,” said Kada Hotic, a survivor of Srebrenica massacre.
In Belgrade, Serb nationalists skirmished with riot police, lashing out against the new Western-leaning government that captured Karadzic.
