Radovan Karadžić - war criminal who did not serve military service

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - War criminal Radovan Karadžić was born on 19 June 1945 in the remote village of Petnjica on the Montenegrin mountain Šavnik. He spent his early childhood in that village, and according to stories, his only pastimes were the gusle and mythomaniac tales.

Karadžić then completed primary school in Nikšić, after which he moved to Sarajevo, where he finished secondary medical school. He studied medicine in Sarajevo, and completed his specialisation in psychiatry in America, Great Britain, and Belgrade. He eventually earned a doctorate in psychiatry and worked in Sarajevo and Belgrade.

He married Ljiljana Zelen-Karadžić, with whom he has two children, daughter Sonja and son Saša.

First arrest in 1984

After being arrested on 1 November 1984 on suspicion of embezzlement, Karadžić spent 11 months in prison. Although he was sentenced to three years three years later, he did not serve the prison sentence due to time already spent in custody.

From politician to war criminal

After the introduction of democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) was founded, with Radovan Karadžić at its helm.

Radovan Karadžić was one of the founders of the separate assembly of the Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina on 24 October 1991, which claimed to represent the Serbian people in BiH. The SDS-controlled Assembly of Bosnian Serbs declared the "Republic of the Serbian People of Bosnia and Herzegovina" on 9 January 1992.

The persecution, ethnic cleansing, and genocide resulting from the activities of that assembly have been condemned today through the verdict against Radovan Karadžić.

The Hague Tribunal indicted Karadžić for war crimes in July 1995, following the genocide in Srebrenica. Because of this, Karadžić was excluded from the negotiations that led to the Dayton Peace Agreement, and later he was forced to resign from his position as President of the RS and party duties in 1996. Until 1997, Karadžić remained in Pale, withdrew from political life, and remained the shadow leader of both the SDS and the entire Republika Srpska. During 1998 and 1999, he disappeared, and all searches for him proved unsuccessful.

Neither his mother's appeal in 2003, nor the appeal of the then RS government (in 2005) for him to surrender, yielded results.

On 21 July 2008, a quack doctor named Dragan Dabić was arrested in Belgrade, and shortly thereafter, the news echoed throughout the region and the world that Dragan Dabić was actually Radovan Karadžić.

Serbia extradited him to The Hague on 30 July of the same year.

He is often described as a poet, politician, and criminal who did not serve his military service.