Who is Radovan Karadzic?
Updated on 23 October 2009
From the siege of Sarajevo to the massacres at Srebrenica, the arrest of Radovan Karadzic is a significant moment in Balkan history. But why?
Before entering politics, Karadzic had worked as a doctor and psychologist in Sarajevo.
When Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia, Karadzic led the Bosnian Serbs to their own republic in 1992.
With the notorious General Ratko Mladic, Karadzic systematically removed Bosnia's Muslims and Croats from Serb-held areas of Bosnia, giving the world the euphemism "ethnic cleansing".
Karadzic was responsible for holding the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, under siege. From his Bosnian parliament in Pale, he resisted every attempt at peace brokered by international mediators.
ITN journalists discovered prison camps full of the ill and malnourished - the images, which were sent around the globe, evoked the work of the Nazis.
Karadzic's trial will pivot around the massacre of thousands of young men in Srebrenica in July 1995. After a siege and stand-off with UN peacekeepers who were meant to be protecting a "safe haven", Bosnian Serbs were handed thousands of young Muslim men, most of whom were killed.
In 1996, under pressure from the international community, and after losing the support of his allies in Serbia, Karadzic was forced into hiding.
Karadzic through the years
Radovan Karadzic faces 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including two counts of genocide, relating to the 1992-1995 Bosnian war that killed 100,000 people.
19 Jun 1945: Karadzic is born in a hamlet in the mountains of Montenegro and raised in poverty by parents who despised the communist rule of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito.
His father was a Serb nationalist fighter wounded by Tito's partisans at the close of world war two.
Karadzic moves to Sarajevo as a student and becomes a professional psychiatrist specialising in neurosis and depression and an amateur poet whose works had a fantastical, morbid tinge.
29 Feb - 1 March 1992: Bosnia's Muslims and Croats vote for independence in a referendum boycotted by Serbs.
6 April 1992: European Union recognises Bosnia's independence after the break-up of Yugoslavia. War breaks out and a 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo by Serbs, under the leadership of Radovan Karadzic, begins. More than 100,000 people were killed during the Bosnian war, which gave the world the term "ethnic cleansing".
On the eve of war, Karadzic warns against plans to declare Bosnia a sovereign state, saying it would perhaps "make the Muslim people disappear, because the Muslims cannot defend themselves if there is war".
May 1992: Karadzic becomes the first president of Republika Srpska. He also serves as supreme commander of the armed forces.
9 July 1995: Karadzic issues a new order to conquer Srebrenica.
11 July 1995: around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys are killed in the Srebrenica massacre after forces led by Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, who is also a fugitive of the tribunal, seized the UN "safe area" of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia - the worst atrocity in Europe since world war two.
July 1995: the UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague indicts Karadzic and Mladic for genocide for the siege of Sarajevo. Four months later, a second indictment for genocide is issued for orchestrating the Srebrenica massacre.
August 1995: Nato starts air strikes against Bosnian Serb troops.
21 November 1995: following Nato air strikes against Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic agree to a US-brokered peace deal in Dayton, Ohio.
14 December 1995: the three leaders sign the Dayton peace accords in Paris, paving the way for the arrival of a 66,000-strong Nato peacekeeping implementation force (Ifor) in Bosnia. The international community establishes a permanent presence in the country through the office of an international peace overseer.
1996: Karadzic goes into hiding, under pressure from the international community to quit as president, and after losing the support of his allies in Serbia.
21 July 2008: Serbia announces that Karadzic had been arrested. Serbian officials say he had been living for several years under an assumed name in Belgrade, posing as an alternative healer, and show photographs of him unrecognisable behind long hair, thick glasses and a beard.
31 July 2008: Karadzic makes his first appearance at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, saying he has been kidnapped and fears for his life. He says he wants to handle his own defence rather than use a lawyer.
September 2009: prosecutors trying Karadzic for war crimes scale back the scope of their case, reducing the time needed to present arguments. The prosecution, in its filings, reduces the number of municipalities where incidents related to the indictment took place, but kept nearly intact its planned testimony on the siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
26 October 2009: the trial begins of Radovan Karadzic for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Hague.
