War crimes suspect quizzed after decade on run

BELGRADE, Serbia - Bosnian Serb wartime president Radovan Karadzic, one of the world's most wanted war crimes fugitives, was arrested near Belgrade after 11 years on the run, in disguise and working as a doctor.

Serbian officials said Tuesday Karadzic was arrested near Belgrade. They showed reporters a photograph of an unrecognizable Karadzic, thin and with a long, white beard and flowing hair.

He was working for a private doctor, posing as a specialist in alternative medicine, said Rasim Ljajic, Serbia's point man for cooperation with The Hague war crimes tribunal.

"He happily, freely walked around the city," Serbia's war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told reporters. "Even the people he rented a flat from were unaware of his identity."

Vukcevic said Karadzic, the accused mastermind of Europe's worst massacre since World War II,  has refused to communicate with his captors.

In a terse statement on Monday, Serbian President Boris Tadic confirmed that Karadzic had been detained.

Karadzic, 63, was wanted for genocide and crimes during the Bosnian war. He was charged by the U.N. tribunal with organizing the deadly siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 massacre of up to 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica.

People poured in celebration onto the streets of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital which Karadzic's troops shelled mercilessly in a 43-month siege during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

"I called and woke up my whole family," said Sarajevo resident Fadil Bico as cars honked horns and Bosnian state radio played excerpts of Karadzic's wartime hate speeches.

Serbian government sources said Karadzic had been under surveillance in Serbia for several weeks after a tip-off from a foreign intelligence service.

'Architect of mass murder'
Karadzic was indicted along with his army commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, for genocide at Srebrenica, where some 8,000 unarmed Bosnian Muslim males were rounded up, murdered and bulldozed into mass graves in July 1995.

He is also charged with authorizing the shooting of civilians during the Sarajevo siege in which an estimated 11,000 people were killed.

Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. Balkan troubleshooter during the wars of the 1990s, described Karadzic as the Osama bin Laden of Europe, "a real, true architect of mass murder."

Karadzic went underground more than a year after Holbrooke negotiated the 1995 Dayton accords that ended the war in Bosnia and following the deployment of a huge force of NATO peacekeepers.

AFP - Getty Images file Radovan Karadzic, shown in 1993, is accused of masterminding massacres during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Vukcevic said a judge has ordered his transfer to the U.N. war crimes court in The Hague, Netherlands, to face genocide charges.

Karadzic has three days to appeal the ruling. His lawyer Sveta Vujacic said Karadzic will launch the process to fight extradition.

Karadzic's whereabouts had been a mystery, with his hideouts reportedly including monasteries and mountain caves in remote eastern Bosnia. Some newspaper reports said he had at times disguised himself as a priest by shaving off his trademark silver mane and donning a brown cassock. Others said he wore women's wigs.

Serbian security services found Karadzic while looking for another top war crimes suspect, Gen. Ratko Mladic, Ljajic said.

"He was arrested Monday evening near Belgrade while changing locations," he said.

Ljajic said Karadzic — once known for his distinctively coifed hairdo — was unrecognizable with his long mane, beard and glasses.

"His false identity was very convincing," Vukcevic said. "Even his landlords were unaware of his identity."

Serbia has been under intense pressure from the European Union to turn over suspects from the siege, but Karadzic's arrest came as a surprise to many. One reason may be that nationalists lost power in Serbia when a new pro-Western government took over last month.

The tribunal has described him as the suspected mastermind of "scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history." Prosecutors suspected he eluded the manhunt with the help of Bosnian Serb nationalists and a string of elaborate disguises.

"This is a very important day for the victims who have waited for this arrest for over a decade," the tribunal's head prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, said. "It clearly demonstrates that nobody is beyond the reach of the law and that sooner or later all fugitives will be brought to justice."

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