4 – Radovan Karadzic
Of the figures on our list, none can match our final criminal in terms of his crimes. Thankfully then, he is the one who was brought to justice in the end, though not until long after his disappearance. He makes this count not only because he managed to evade capture for so long, but also because he managed to hide all the while in near enough plain sight. That Radovan Karadzic is one of the worst criminals of the late twentieth century is beyond doubt: he is a convicted war criminal with the blood of thousands on his hands and one of the most notorious figures of the Balkan Wars, a conflict hardly light on notoriety. That such a prominent figure was able to go to the ground and then to live in relatively normality for so long – with the might of the CIA, the UN and more trying to find him – is barely believable. The method by which he did it is stranger yet.
Radovan Karadzic came to prominence in the early 1990s in Bosnia. He had moved to Sarajevo, the capital of the then-Yugoslav republic, to study and later work as a psychiatrist. He spent some time in jail in the late 1980s for embezzlement and fraud before co-founding the Serbian Democratic Party (SDP) in 1989 as a bulwark against the perceived aggression that Serbs would face in Bosnia should Yugoslavia break apart. When Bosnia declared independence in 1992, Karadzic was the head of the self-declared Republika Srpska, the breakaway entity within the new Bosnian state that represented the Serbian community of the country. The UN quickly recognized Bosnia and accepted them as members, while Karadzic traveled on three occasions to New York to discuss the situation in the country regarding the Serbs who wished to remain united with the rump of Yugoslavia, which was now overwhelmingly Serbian.
Surrounded by perceived hostility in Sarajevo and Croatian troops massing at the northern edge of his jurisdiction, Karadzic tried to take control of the armed forces of the Republika Srpska from Ratko Mladic – himself also later charged with war crimes – and entering into a struggle with his own general. It was under the jurisdiction of Karadzic and Mladic that the Siege of Sarajevo was begun and the Srebrenica Massacre carried out, among many other smaller atrocities.
The facts of the two major incidents are worth repeating to gain a modicum of perspective on the crimes committed. In the attempt to take the Bosnian capital – at just under four years, the most protracted besiegement of a capital city in modern military history – an estimated 5,500 civilians were killed along with over 7,000 military personnel from both sides. Houses were shelled near continuously by Bosnian Serb forces that encircled the city from the hills. Entire streets were turned into deathtraps by permanently placed snipers. Almost the entire city was destroyed. The actions of Karadzic’s military were not successful and after 1,425 days, the siege was lifted by the 1995 Dayton Agreement that brought an end to the war.
The other major incident that took place at the time was the Srebrenica Massacre, one of the darkest periods in post-World War Two European history. It was at Srebrenica, a small town close to the Bosnian border with Serbia that 8,373 people were killed by Bosnian Serb forces in an attack that is considered genocidal by both the United States Parliament and the European Union. The UN, too, were culpable, as they had Dutch peacekeepers in the area who failed to stop the separation of men from women and subsequent execution of thousands of men and the rampant sexual crimes against the Bosniak women. The massacre would continue in stages for 11 days.
Karadzic was indicted by a war crimes tribunal in The Hague in 1995, but he had long since gone to ground. Despite being the President of the Republika Srpska and its most recognized figure, he was able to live easily just a short distance from Sarajevo in a mountain village, seemingly unhindered by the $5m USD bounty on his head or the legions of special forces that had been sent out to capture him. It was widely regarded that Bill Clinton had staked much of his foreign policy reputation on bringing the perpetrators of genocide in the Balkans to justice, but nobody could lay a finger on Karadzic. One story tells that a group of Delta Force soldiers had a gorilla suit shipped from the United States to Bosnia, with the intention of causing Karadzic’s bodyguards to slow a car down to a speed at which a grenade could be thrown at it. Of course, Karadzic was nowhere to be found. Despite theoretically being on the run, the Serb warlord released a book of poetry and a bestselling novel. It was assumed that he had left the Republika Srpska in late 1999 and then moved on to somewhere else in the Balkans, but the authorities had lost the scent almost completely.
It was not until 2005 that he would resurface, and in the most unusual of circumstances. He had been posing as a faith healer and New Age spiritualist called Dragan Dabic – not a massive leap for a man who had once been a psychiatrist – and knocked on the door of a fellow mystic in Belgrade, asking to be tutored in the ways of Balkan healers. His hair, always somewhat uncontrolled, was long and held together in a short ponytail, while his beard had grown into a white bushy mess. He had been living in a Belgrade suburb, across the road from one of those tasked to catch him who had been totally unaware that her neighbor was a wanted war criminal. Karadzic hardly kept a low profile: he had a website promoting his psychic services, a column in a local magazine and even drank in a local bar that boasted a picture of himself in his uniform on the wall. His nephew claimed that the two used to travel to Italy to watch Inter Milan soccer matches.
His capture would not be the result of intelligence work, but rather the lack of it. Karadzic’s brother called him from an old mobile with a SIM known to US authorities and the Serb intelligence agency was alerted. They had been known sympathizers of many nationalist figureheads – it was no surprise in Serbia that Karadzic had remained at large – and only after an election had allowed reforming President Boris Tadic to get his own men into office was the tipoff taken seriously. Karadzic was confronted on a bus in a Belgrade suburb and asked his name. When he was told by the policeman that he was Radovan Karadzic, the warlord asked if the cop’s superiors knew what he was getting himself into. The trial began at The Hague in 2008, and the former President found himself facing charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and of taking UN staff members hostage. He was found guilty in 2016 and sentenced to 40 years. The so-called “Butcher of Bosnia”, brought to justice at last.
