Radovan Karadzic

Radovan Karadzic (Serbian Cyrillic)，born 19 June 1945 in Petnjica, SR Montenegro, SFR Yugoslavia) is a Bosnian Serb former politician, poet and psychiatrist who was a fugitive from 1995 until 18 July 2008 after having been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. He was arrested in Belgrade on 18 July 2008 and brought before Belgrade's War Crimes Court. For some time he had been working at a private clinic in Belgrade specialising in alternative medicine and psychology under the alias Dr. Dragan David Dabić.

There had been an outstanding international arrest warrant against Karadžić for more than a decade following Rule 61 of ICTY which concluded that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accused has committed war crimes including genocide, mainly against Bosnian Muslim civilians during the Bosnian War (1992-1995). The United States government had offered a $5 million reward for his and Ratko Mladić's arrests.

Early life

Radovan Karadžić was born in Petnjica near Šavnik, SR Montenegro, SFR Yugoslavia to a family hailing from the Drobnjaci Montenegrin clan. His father, Vuko, had been a member of the Chetniks - the army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia's government in exile during World War II. His father was imprisoned by the post-war communist regime for much of his son's childhood. Karadžić moved to Sarajevo, Yugoslavia in 1960 to pursue his studies in psychiatry at the Sarajevo University School of Medicine. He studied neurotic disorders and depression at Næstved Hospital in Denmark in 1970, and during 1974 and 1975 he spent a year pursuing further medical training at Columbia University in New York.After his return to Yugoslavia, he worked in the Koševo Hospital. He also became a poet and fell under the influence of the Serbian writer Dobrica Ćosić, who encouraged him to go into politics.

Political life

In 1989 he co-founded the Serbian Democratic Party (Srpska Demokratska Stranka) in Bosnia and Herzegovina which aimed at gathering the Republic's Bosnian Serb community and joining Croatian Serbs in leading them in staying part of Yugoslavia in the event of secession by those two republics from the federation.

A separate Serb Assembly was founded on 24 October 1991, in order to exclusively represent the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The leading Serb political party in Bosnia and Herzegovina, led by Radovan Karadžić, organized the creation of "Serb autonomous provinces" (SAOs) within Bosnia and the establishment of an assembly to represent them. In November 1991, the Bosnian Serbs held a referendum which resulted in an overwhelming vote in favour of staying in a federal state with Serbia and Montenegro, as part of Yugoslavia. On 9 January 1992, the Bosnian Serb Assembly proclaimed the Republic of the Serb people of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Република српског народа Босне и Херцеговина / Republika srpskog naroda Bosne i Hercegovine). On 28 February 1992, the constitution of the Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was adopted and declared that the state's territory included Serb autonomous regions, municipalities, and other Serbian ethnic entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it was declared to be a part of the federal Yugoslav state.

On 29 February and 1 March 1992 a referendum on the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Yugoslavia was held. Many Serbs boycotted the referendum while Bosniaks and Croats and pro-secession Serbs turned out, and 64% of eligible voters voted 98% in favor of independence. However Bosnian law required the consent of all three ethnic groups. On 6 April 1992, Bosnia was recognized by the UN as an independent state. Karadžić became the first president of the Bosnian Serb administration in Pale on or about 13 May 1992 after the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. At the time he assumed this position, his de jure powers, as described in the constitution of the Bosnian Serb administration, included, but were not limited to, commanding the army of the Bosnian Serb administration in times of war and peace, and having the authority to appoint, promote and discharge officers of the army.