Radovan Karadžić

Radovan Karadžić (born June 19, 1945, Šavnik, Yugoslavia [now in Montenegro]) is a politician who was the leader (1990–96) of the Serb Democratic Party in Bosnia and president (1992–95) of the autonomous Republika Srpska, a self-proclaimed Serb republic within Bosnia. In 2016 he was found guilty of committing war crimes, including genocide, during the war that followed Bosnia and Herzegovina’s split from Yugoslavia in 1992.

Early life and rise to power

Karadžić’s father was a member of the Chetniks, the Serbs who during World War II fought both the Nazis (along with their Croatian collaborators) and the Partisans, the communist guerrillas led by Josip Broz Tito. Karadžić studied medicine in Sarajevo and became a physician and a psychiatrist; he also published poetry and books for children. In 1985 Karadžić was imprisoned for 11 months for fraud involving the use of state funds. In 1990 he helped found the Serb Democratic Party, a group dedicated to thwarting Croatian parties in Bosnia, and served as its first leader.

Presidency of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War

In 1992 Karadžić became president of a self-declared autonomous Bosnian Serb republic that allied itself with the rump of the Yugoslav federation (then consisting only of Serbia and Montenegro). With the support of Serbian Pres. Slobodan Miloševic and the Bosnian Serb military leader Gen. Ratko Mladić, Karadžić began a campaign to take control of parts of Bosnia and to purge the areas of non-Serb peoples. Throughout the Bosnian War (1992–95), he alternately pursued ruthless military actions and expressed interest in peace efforts advanced by Western leaders. On July 25 and again on November 16, 1995, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), held in The Hague, indicted him for crimes that included genocide, murder, rape, and other mistreatment of civilians. As the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Karadžić was held responsible for the “ethnic cleansing” of Serb-held areas of Bosnia, during which tens of thousands of Bosniaks (Muslims) and Croats were killed or driven from their homes in what has been called the most atrocious instance of genocide committed in Europe since the close of World War II. The most heinous act attributed to Karadžić was the ordering of the murder of more than 7,000 Bosniaks in the town of Srebrenica in July 1995.

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At the end of 1995, after Miloševic had closed Yugoslavia’s borders with Bosnia and apparently withdrawn support from the Bosnian Serbs, Karadžić was pressured into signing the Dayton Accords. This peace agreement provided for a division of Bosnia and Herzegovina into two autonomous sections—a Croat-Bosniak entity (the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina) and a Bosnian Serb republic (the Republika Srpska)—but with a unified presidency. The accords specified that no one indicted for war crimes could participate in the elections scheduled for September 14, 1996; thus, Karadžić was required to relinquish his government and party positions. Troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), charged with enforcing the accords, had the authority to arrest Karadžić but took no action against him.

Arrest, war crimes trial, and conviction

Karadžić went into hiding in 1997, and reports over the ensuing years placed him in, among other places, Serbia, eastern Bosnia, Russia, and Montenegro. Despite his status as an internationally maligned war criminal, he managed to publish a novel, Cudesna hronika noći (“Miraculous Chronicles of the Night”; 2004), and still enjoyed the support of some Serb nationalists. On July 21, 2008, nearly 13 years after being indicted by the ICTY, he was arrested near Belgrade, Serbia, by Serbian authorities; shortly thereafter he was transferred to The Hague to await trial. It was speculated that Serbia’s desire to gain entrance into the European Union played a role in its redoubled efforts to capture the fugitive. At the time of the arrest, it was revealed that Karadžić had disguised himself and used an alias, Dragan Dabić, in order to practice alternative medicine openly in Belgrade.

Karadžić’s trial at The Hague opened in the fall of 2009. The prosecution rested its case in June 2012, and Karadžić petitioned the court to have all charges against him dropped due to lack of evidence. Judges dismissed one of the two counts of genocide but upheld the remaining count (which related to the Srebrenica massacre) as well as nine other charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In July 2013 the second charge of genocide was reinstated against Karadžić. On March 24, 2016, Karadžić was found guilty of 10 of the 11 counts against him, including the crime of genocide against the residents of Srebrenica, and he was sentenced to 40 years in prison. The decision was appealed, and in 2019 a UN tribunal upheld his conviction and increased his sentence to life in prison.