Serb fugitive hid in plain sight

BELGRADE, Serbia — For more than a decade, the world’s most-wanted war-crimes fugitive displayed a talent for eluding international justice. His secret? Hide in plain sight.

In a ruse worthy of any thriller, Radovan Karadzic transformed himself from a leader instantly recognizable by his famous shock of salt-and-pepper hair into a man resembling a New Age mystic, with a flowing white beard and black robe.

Believed to be protected by a coterie of ultra-nationalists, the former Bosnian Serb strongman, once a doctor and psychiatrist trained in the U.S., worked at an alternative medicine clinic in Belgrade.

His disguise was so effective that prosecutors say he walked freely around town without being noticed and even his landlords didn’t know his true identity.

A photograph displayed by prosecutors at a news conference Tuesday showed a gaunt elderly man unrecognizable from the robust warlord who strutted brashly before his troops during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

That life on the run ended abruptly with Karadzic’s capture Monday after a new pro-Western government tightened the dragnet around him. Many observers have long suspected that recently fallen prime minister Vojislav Kostunica, a nationalist with close ties to Karadzic during the Bosnian war, had shielded him from arrest.

The fugitive had been masquerading as an expert in "human quantum energy" using the fake name "D.D. David" printed on his business card. The initials apparently stood for Dragan Dabic, an alias authorities said he used.

He even had his own Web site — www.psy-help-energy.com — and gave lectures before hundreds of people on alternative medicine.

TV footage provided by a local station shows Karadzic sitting on a panel at a medical conference, glancing nervously at the cameraman next to him.

Using his alias, Karadzic was a regular contributor to the Serbian alternative medicine magazine Healthy Life. Its editor, Goran Kojic, said he was stunned when he saw the photo of Karadzic on TV and realized the bizarre truth.

"It never even occurred to me that this man with a long white beard and hair was Karadzic," said Kojic.

Karadzic’s whereabouts had been a mystery since he went on the run in 1998, with his hideouts reportedly including monasteries and caves in remote eastern Bosnia. The U.S. set a $5 million bounty for his arrest.

For years it has been widely assumed that Karadzic’s whereabouts were known to nationalist supporters and even to high-ranking Serbian officials. But the picture painted by officials suggested a successful search rather than the end of protection.

Serbian security services said they found Karadzic on Monday while looking for another top war crimes suspect facing genocide charges, Bosnian Serb wartime commander Gen. Ratko Mladic. The connection — why the search for one led to the other — was not explained.

Prosecutors said Karadzic was arrested while waiting for a bus in a grim part of Belgrade known as a nationalist stronghold. Authorities refused to reveal more details, saying his movements were being analyzed and would be kept secret until Mladic’s capture.

"We are absolutely determined to finish this job," said Rasim Ljajic, a Serbian government official in charge of war crimes.

Karadzic’s lawyer Sveta Vujcic says his client was arrested Friday, not on Monday as authorities say. He said Karadzic was hooded during the capture and kept for three days in solitary confinement.