Radovan Karadzic is a former Bosnian Serb leader. He is currently on trial for war crimes and genocide at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. Karadzic is thought to be behind the deaths of thousands of people in Sarajevo and 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica. He was a fugitive for almost 13 years.

 

Karadzic was born in 1945 in Montenegro. He moved to Sarajevo in 1960 to study psychiatry. In the 1970s, he studied neurotic disorders and depression at a hospital in Denmark and at Columbia University in New York. When he returned to Yugoslavia, he started writing poetry. He also got into politics and made a speech attacking nationalism.

 

Karadzic co-founded the Serbian Democratic Party in 1989. He wanted to create a nation of Serbs if Yugoslavia ever broke up. In 1992, he proclaimed the Republika Srpska, representing Serbs from Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the Balkan Wars of 1992-1995 Karadzic took control of his republic’s troops from his military commander Ratko Mladic. He formulated the battle plans in his fight for Serb nationalism.

 

In 1996, Karadzic was put on the UN’s most-wanted list, charged with crimes against humanity. He went on the run for nearly 13 years. While a fugitive, he assumed an alias and lived in Belgrade. He lived a normal life and worked as a specialist in alternative medicine. He was arrested in Belgrade in July 2008 and flown to The Hague, where he is conducting his own defence.