Wednesday, July 23, 2008

The secret life of fugitive Radovan Karadzic

The details are now coming out about the secret life of Europe's most wanted man Radovan Karadzic and frankly they're pretty amazing.

Karadzic was the former president of the Bosnian Serb republic during Bosnia's civil war in the mid-1990's. He's believed to be responsible for ordering the deaths of thousands of Bosnian Muslims, including the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the village of Srebrenica.

He's spent the last decade on the run. The main theory on his whereabouts was that Karadzic was being sheltered in a series of remote Serbian Orthodox monasteries. It turns out though that Karadzic was living a very public life in Serbia's capital Belgrade earning a living as an alternative healer - a sort of new age doctor. His brilliant disguise consisted of a pair of oversized eyeglasses and a fuzzy Santa Claus-style white beard.

Karadzic felt so comfortable in his adopted life he not only practiced medicine but also participated in public lectures, some of which were videotaped. He's also said to have hung out at a local bar that had a picture of Karadzic (sans glasses and beard) hanging on the wall. Still no one seemed to notice that the quiet new age doctor drinking a beer was actually Karadzic himself.

Some reports even suggest that Karadzic's arrest was a surprise even to the authorities who thought they were closing in on Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military leader during the war and #2 on Europe's most wanted list, instead of Karadzic.

Karadzic is now headed to The Hague and the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) where he is expected to face 11 counts including genocide and war crimes charges.
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