Belgrade:Bosnian Serb wartime president Radovan Karadzic, indicted for genocide in the Bosnia war, was captured in disguise near Belgrade after 11 years on the run and had been working as a doctor, Serbian officials said on today.
The arrest on Monday of Karadzic, who is held responsible for the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995, was a condition for Serbian progress towards European Union membership.
He is the most prominent Balkan war crimes suspect arrested since late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic was sent to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague on genocide charges in 2001, leaving only two suspects at large.
The Serbian officials said Karadzic was caught while moving from one Belgrade suburb to another. They showed reporters a photograph of an unrecognizable Karadzic, now 63, looking thin, with a long, white beard, flowing hair and thick glasses.
"He happily, freely walked around the city," Serbia's war crimes prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic, told reporters. "Even his landlords were unaware of his identity."
Karadzic had wanted Serb areas of Bosnia to be linked to Serbia and other areas dominated by Serbs at a time when Milosevic was fanning nationalism in Serbia.
The trained psychiatrist worked for a private clinic, posing as a specialist in alternative medicine under the assumed name of Dragan Dabic. His last known address was in New Belgrade, a sprawling suburb of concrete tower blocks.
Serbian officials said Karadzic had been served with an indictment and his lawyers had three days to appeal. He is expected to be transferred to The Hague shortly after.
I called and woke up my whole family," said Sarajevo resident Fadil Bico as cars honked horns and Bosnian state radio played excerpts of Karadzic's wartime hate speeches.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said his arrest showed Belgrade was cooperating fully with the U.N. war crimes tribunal. An EU foreign ministers meeting on Tuesday was to discuss closer ties with the new pro-Western government.
Serbian government sources said Karadzic had been under surveillance in Serbia for several weeks after a tip-off from a foreign intelligence service.
Karadzic was indicted along with his army commander, General Ratko Mladic, for genocide at Srebrenica, where some 8,000 unarmed Bosnian Muslim males were rounded up and murdered and bulldozed into mass graves in July 1995.
He is also charged with authorizing the shooting of civilians during the Sarajevo siege in which an estimateedestimated 11,000 people were killed.
Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. Balkan troubleshooter during the wars of the 1990s' described Karadzic as the Osama bin Laden of Europe, "a real, true architect of mass murder".
Karadzic went underground more than a year after Holbrooke negotiated the 1995 Dayton accords that ended the war in Bosnia and following the deployment of a huge force of NATO peacekeepers in early 1996.
His arrest leaves two war crimes suspects still wanted by the Hague tribunal.
"The arrest of Radovan Karadzic is confirmation that every criminal will eventually face justice," said Munira Subasic, head of a Srebrenica widow's association.
"I hope that people who had to keep quiet because of Karadzic will start revealing the locations of mass graves and let us find the truth about our beloved ones," she said.
EU members who say Serbia must hand over all war crimes suspects are likely to see the arrest as proof Karadzic's fellow genocide suspect, fugitive wartime commander Mladic, can also be seized if Belgrade has the political will to face down hard-line nationalists.
The new government is an odd-couple alliance of President Tadic's pro-Western Democratic Party and the Socialists of the late Slobodan Milosevic, who died in detention at the Hague war crimes prison before del Ponte could obtain a conviction.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised Serbian authorities for taking a "decisive step toward ending impunity" of those indicted for crimes in Balkan conflicts.
Serbian officials said Karadzic had been served with the indictment and had three days to reply.
He is then expected to be transferred to The Hague tribunal.
Karadzic is still seen by militant nationalists as a national savior following the collapse of Yugoslavia. "This is payback to the EU for bringing this new government to power," said Aleksandar Vucic of the nationalist Radicals, one of Serbia's strongest parties. "Karadzic is a Serbian hero. There will be a strong backlash."
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