Serbian War Criminal Karadzic Arrested [Updated]

BELGRADE, Serbia – Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, a war crimes fugitive and one of the world’s most wanted men, was arrested on Monday evening in a sweep by Serbian security forces, the country’s president said.

Karadzic has been indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia for genocide during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. He has been hiding since 1998.

President Boris Tadic’s office said in a statement that Karadzic was arrested “in an action by the Serbian security services.”

Karadzic, who was the leader of ethnic Serbs during the war that erupted with Bosnia’s secession from Yugoslavia, is accused of masterminding massacres that the U.N. war crimes tribunal described as “scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history.”

UN indictment: Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic

Radovan Karadžić is charged with genocide for the murder of close to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995. The indictment alleges that Radovan Karadžić also committed genocide, persecutions and other crimes when forces under his command killed non-Serbs during and after attacks on towns throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, rounded up thousands of non-Serbs and transferred them to detention facilities set up by the Bosnian Serb authorities. The indictment alleges that forces under Radovan Karadžić’s command killed, tortured, mistreated, and sexually assaulted non-Serbs in these camps.

Fugitive Karadzic arrested Friday on a bus in Belgrade suburbs

Former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic has already been brought before a judge at the war crimes court in Belgrade, in accordance with the law on co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague.

His lawyer Sveta Vujacic has already claimed his client has not been treated fairly, he told reporters outside the Belgrade court building:

“Radovan Karadzic was arrested last Friday morning on a public bus. By law he should have been taken to a judge immediately, so no one knows who arrested him, who ordered it and why he was held for three days until he was brought here tonight. Radovan Karadzic himself does not know that either. He just said that these people showed him a police badge and then he was taken to some place and kept in a room. What they did is absolutely against the law.”

Fugitive Karadzic hid as bearded medic

(CNN) — Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic was working at a medical practice in Belgrade using a false identity and heavily disguised by a snow white beard before his arrest brought an end to more than a decade on the run, Serbian officials said.

Rasim Ljajic, the Serbian minister for relations with The Hague tribunal, said Mr Karadzic,63, had lived in a “very convincing” way as a non-Serbian citizen, using false documents giving him the name of “Dragan Dabic”.

“The fact that he was involved with alternative medicine, earning his money from practising alternative medicine, shows that he worked. He was working in a private practice and the last place where he had residence was New Belgrade,” he told a news conference in Belgrade.

Mr Vukcevic said: “[Mr Karadzic] walked around freely, even appeared in public places. The people who rented him the apartment did not know his true identity.”