Radovan Karadzic: From psychiatrist to ‘Butcher of Bosnia’

By CNN Staff
4 minute read
Updated 2:42 PM EDT, Thu March 24, 2016
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic listens to the verdict at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
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'Butcher of Bosnia' Radovan Karadzic found guilty
01:48 - Source: CNN

Story highlights

Radovan Karadzic found guilty of 10 of 11 charges, including genocide over Srebrenica massacre

The "Butcher of Bosnia" was the leader of the breakaway Serb Republic in Bosnia in the 1990s

A trained psychiatrist and published poet, he spent a dozen years on the run before trial

CNN  — 

Radovan Karadzic, whose Interpol charges listed “flamboyant behavior” as a distinguishing characteristic, was a practicing psychiatrist who came to be nicknamed the “Butcher of Bosnia.”

On Thursday he was found guilty of genocide and other crimes against humanity, in what was seen as one of the most important war crimes trials since World War II.

A special U.N. court in The Hague, Netherlands, sentenced the 70-year-old to 40 years in prison for his participation in four “joint criminal enterprises,” including an overarching plot from October 1991 to November 1995 “to permanently remove Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory.”

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He was found guilty of 10 of the 11 charges against him, including extermination, persecution, forcible transfer, terror, hostage taking and genocide.

The latter charge related to his role in the Srebrenica massacre, in which more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces under his command.

As the leader of the breakaway Serb Republic in Bosnia, Karadzic commanded troops who carried out widespread massacres of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats during a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia.

The verdicts – which can be appealed – are the result of a trial process that began in 2008, when he was arrested after 12 years as a fugitive.

Rise to power

Karadzic was born on June 19, 1945, in Petnjica, Montenegro. He studied psychiatry and medicine at the University of Sarajevo during the 1960s and took courses in psychiatry and poetry at Columbia University from 1974 to 1975.

A broken skull lays exhumed in a newly discovered mass grave site in the village of Budak, just a few hundreds meters away from the Memorial Center of Potocari, near the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, 11 July 2007.
A broken skull lays exhumed in a newly discovered mass grave site in the village of Budak, just a few hundreds meters away from the Memorial Center of Potocari, near the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, 11 July 2007.
Kevin Weaver/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
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Karadzic, a Serb-Croat, in 1990 helped found the Serbian Democratic Party, a party aimed at unifying Serbs into a common state, and became its president.

Two years later, he became president of the newly declared Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, later called “Republika Srpska.” During the next three years, he ordered Bosnian Serb forces to seize the majority of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He also announced, according to his U.N. indictment, six “strategic objectives” for the Serbian people. They included the establishment of state borders between the Serbs and the other two ethnic communities, Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats.

Answering to him, according to the indictment, was Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic.

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From May 1992, the indictment said, Bosnian Serb forces under Mladic’s command targeted civilian areas of Sarajevo with shelling and sniping during a three-year conflict within the city.

In July 1995, according to the U.N. indictment, troops under Mladic’s command executed an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslim male prisoners in Srebrenica, a U.N. safe area, and then participated in a comprehensive effort to conceal the killings. The massacre is considered the worst in Europe since World War II.

The indictment states that Bosnian Serb forces acted under Karadzic’s direction and worked to “significantly reduce the Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat and other non-Serb populations” in municipalities that were seized.

Years in hiding

When Karadzic was found, he'd grown a long beard and wore spectacles to disguise himself.
When Karadzic was found, he'd grown a long beard and wore spectacles to disguise himself.
Getty Images

Karadzic disappeared from the public eye in September 1996, a year after the Dayton Peace Accords brought a formal end to the conflict and banned anyone accused of war crimes, including him, from office.

He reportedly shaved his trademark bushy hair, grew a beard and donned priest’s robes, moving from monastery to monastery in the mountains to avoid capture.

CNN correspondent Alessio Vinci said in 2008: “He enjoyed protection from the local population, wherever he was hiding. Legend has it he disguised himself as a priest to take part in his mother’s funeral.

“In 2002, after NATO launched one of its many failed raids to try to arrest Karadzic in Bosnia, I interviewed his mother. At that time she said: ‘Serbs are righteous people and I can see that they support him, and that they adore him the way he is. They would lose their lives to protect him.’”

Twenty years after the Dayton Peace Accords brought an end to fighting in the Bosnian War, Pope Francis visits Sarajevo to pray for long-lasting reconciliation. Three years of bloody fighting in the early 1990s left the region and its people deeply battle-scarred, and repairing the damage is still a work in progress. The parliament building in Sarajevo was shelled, shot at, and set on fire; today it is once again home to lawmakers.
Twenty years after the Dayton Peace Accords brought an end to fighting in the Bosnian War, Pope Francis visits Sarajevo to pray for long-lasting reconciliation. Three years of bloody fighting in the early 1990s left the region and its people deeply battle-scarred, and repairing the damage is still a work in progress. The parliament building in Sarajevo was shelled, shot at, and set on fire; today it is once again home to lawmakers.
Nic Robertson/CNN
Today many of the buildings which were damaged in the fighting -- such as the Holiday Inn hotel, overlooking "Sniper Alley," where the international media, including CNN's team, was based while reporting on the war -- have been renovated or rebuilt.
Today many of the buildings which were damaged in the fighting -- such as the Holiday Inn hotel, overlooking "Sniper Alley," where the international media, including CNN's team, was based while reporting on the war -- have been renovated or rebuilt.
Nic Robertson/CNN
Others have been razed to the ground and replaced with shiny new buildings -- a sign of some of the progress made in the two decades since the guns fell silent after Bosnia's Muslims, Eastern Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croatians agreed to end the fighting.
Others have been razed to the ground and replaced with shiny new buildings -- a sign of some of the progress made in the two decades since the guns fell silent after Bosnia's Muslims, Eastern Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croatians agreed to end the fighting.
Nic Robertson/CNN
So much blood spilled: More than 11,000 people were killed in Sarajevo alone; estimates suggest between 100,000 and 150,00 died across the country. Here, children were killed while playing outside a U.N. office.
So much blood spilled: More than 11,000 people were killed in Sarajevo alone; estimates suggest between 100,000 and 150,00 died across the country. Here, children were killed while playing outside a U.N. office.
Nic Robertson/CNN
When CNN was reporting from here during the siege of Sarajevo, the U.N. ran the airport, and aid flights were targeted by shells as they came in to land; driving along the road into the city meant crossing the front line through No Man's Land.
When CNN was reporting from here during the siege of Sarajevo, the U.N. ran the airport, and aid flights were targeted by shells as they came in to land; driving along the road into the city meant crossing the front line through No Man's Land.
Nic Robertson/CNN
Those who made the journey passed tanks along the way, and risked death or serious injury from snipers' bullets -- ABC producer David Kaplan was shot dead on his way from the airport to the city. In one 14-day period in the summer of 1992, 12 journalists reporting on the war were killed or wounded.
Those who made the journey passed tanks along the way, and risked death or serious injury from snipers' bullets -- ABC producer David Kaplan was shot dead on his way from the airport to the city. In one 14-day period in the summer of 1992, 12 journalists reporting on the war were killed or wounded.
Nic Robertson/CNN
This hotel and a branch of fast food chain McDonald's have been built alongside Sarajevo's "Sniper Alley" -- CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth was shot and seriously wounded nearby.
This hotel and a branch of fast food chain McDonald's have been built alongside Sarajevo's "Sniper Alley" -- CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth was shot and seriously wounded nearby.
Nic Robertson/CNN
This intersection was once deserted, with local residents forced off the streets for fear of snipers and shelling. Today it's a bustling area, but while there's no longer any danger of being shot, people in the city are concerned about continuing peace in the region, and about corruption.
This intersection was once deserted, with local residents forced off the streets for fear of snipers and shelling. Today it's a bustling area, but while there's no longer any danger of being shot, people in the city are concerned about continuing peace in the region, and about corruption.
Nic Robertson/CNN
One man told us he hoped the Pope's visit would help: "I want peace between Muslims and other religions, that's it. I want to stop war." But another said the pontiff's visit was unlikely to change anything: "We have a lot of politicians, corrupted and everything. If someone sends us money from other countries, they take it."
One man told us he hoped the Pope's visit would help: "I want peace between Muslims and other religions, that's it. I want to stop war." But another said the pontiff's visit was unlikely to change anything: "We have a lot of politicians, corrupted and everything. If someone sends us money from other countries, they take it."
Nic Robertson/CNN
Lion Cemetery was once a football field. Now it is the resting place of thousands of victims of the siege of Sarajevo, including the city's <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/05/world/europe/bosnia-romeo-juliet/">"Romeo and Juliet," Bosko Brkic and Admira Ismic</a>, who were shot as they tried to cross the Vrbanja Bridge, and died in each other's arms in May 1993. Kurt Schork, the journalist who first told their story, was also buried here after he died on assignment in Sierra Leone in 2000.
Lion Cemetery was once a football field. Now it is the resting place of thousands of victims of the siege of Sarajevo, including the city's "Romeo and Juliet," Bosko Brkic and Admira Ismic, who were shot as they tried to cross the Vrbanja Bridge, and died in each other's arms in May 1993. Kurt Schork, the journalist who first told their story, was also buried here after he died on assignment in Sierra Leone in 2000.
Nic Robertson/CNN
Pope Francis says he is coming to Bosnia to encourage "peaceful coexistence," but two decades on from the war, one Sarajevo woman told us things were still looking bleak: "Twenty years later we are still suffering here," she said. "I can't see any future here. I have three children and I still can't see any future for them."
Pope Francis says he is coming to Bosnia to encourage "peaceful coexistence," but two decades on from the war, one Sarajevo woman told us things were still looking bleak: "Twenty years later we are still suffering here," she said. "I can't see any future here. I have three children and I still can't see any future for them."
Nic Robertson/CNN
Sarajevo: Then and now

Despite years on the run, Karadzic wrote a book of poetry, “Miraculous Chronicles of the Night” – 1,200 copies of which sold out at the 2004 Belgrade International Book Fair.

After his arrest was announced, Serb officials revealed the final chapter of his life on the run had seen Karadzic reprise his medical role, working in a clinic in Belgrade under a false identity and heavily disguised by a white beard, long hair and spectacles.