BELGRADE, SERBIA — He grew a bushy white beard and called himself Doctor David. He peddled meditation and alternative healing, sold amulets on a website and made the rounds on the lecture circuit.
Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader regarded as one of the world's most notorious fugitive war-crimes suspects, built a life on the lam that was public, if disguised, and seemingly unfettered by fears of detection.
The true identity of the bespectacled, white-haired man, who looked a bit the unkempt Santa Claus, was unknown to his landlords, neighbors, the man who designed his website and the editor of the magazine he wrote for.
Using the name Dragan David Dabic, Karadzic was practicing medicine in a private clinic, authorities said, and writing a column for Healthy Life, a small magazine that publishes every other month.
"He happily, freely walked around the city," Vladimir Vukcevic, Serbia's war crimes prosecutor, said Tuesday.
After eluding capture for 13 years, Karadzic was arrested by Serbian security forces in the Belgrade suburb where he had made his home, snatched as he rode a public bus. One day after officials announced he was in custody, Karadzic awaited probable extradition to the international war crimes tribunal at The Hague.
The 63-year-old Karadzic has been indicted on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and other atrocities stemming from a campaign to repress Bosnian Muslims and other non-Serbs as Bosnia-Herzegovina attempted to break away from Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
His alleged crimes include overseeing the 1995 massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, the largest atrocity in post-World War II Europe. Men acting under his orders are believed to have set up detention camps where women were imprisoned and raped and men were beaten and starved.
Karadzic and his wartime army commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, were the last major Balkan war crimes suspects evading justice. Karadzic's capture appears to have resulted from a shifting political will on the part of Belgrade's new pro-Western government, which is eager to rehabilitate Serbia's standing in Europe and the world.
"He's proud of everything he's done," Karadzic's lawyer, Svetozar Vujacic, told The Times after visiting his client in jail. "He allows that war crimes were committed, but he had nothing to do with that."
Finding Karadzic, it seems, was not that difficult. He was hiding in plain sight.
