Radovan Karadzic: Psychiatrist, Poet, Politician, Convict?

Radovan Karadzic was born in the village of Petnica near Savnik in Montenegro in June 1945 – some 2,000 kilometres from The Hague, where the UN court will hand down its verdict this week on whether he was guilty of genocide and war crimes.

He spent his childhood in Montenegro, going to school in Niksic, before moving to the Bosnian capital Sarajevo to study at its medical high school. He continued his studies at Sarajevo Medical University and went on to specialise in psychiatry at the city’s Kosevo hospital.

Karadzic had two children with his doctor wife Ljiljana – a son, Sasa, whose post-war career is unknown, and a daughter, Sonja, who is now vice-president of the Bosnian Serb parliament.

Along with his work as a psychiatrist, mostly with patients suffering from depression, first in Sarajevo and then for a while in Belgrade, Karadzic also wrote poetry.

He published four books of verse and achieved modest renown; during the war years, he was awarded a literary prize in Russia. He even published a volume of verse while he was on the run after the war ended. In one poem, ‘Sarajevo’, he wrote: “The town burns like a piece of incense/In the smoke rumbles our consciousness.”

Karadzic’s supervisor while he worked at the Kosevo hospital in Sarajevo was Ismet Ceric, who told PBS in an interview that Karadzic always had an “incredibly high opinion of himself”.

“Sometimes it was absolutely unbelievable,” Ceric recalled. “He said, ‘I am an excellent poet, I am an excellent psychotherapist, I am an excellent businessman in the communist system.’ At the time, we thought it was his unique sense of humour.”

Convicted in the 1980s

In the mid-1980s, Karadzic ran into his first legal problems. He was arrested on suspicion of embezzling public funds in order to finance the construction of his summer house in the town of Pale, above Sarajevo.

Karadzic was convicted, but because of the time he spent on remand before the trial, he did not go to prison.

He spent his months behind bars on remand with his acquaintance Momcilo Krajisnik, who was also being held on suspicion of also embezzling public funds while working at an energy firm.

Krajisnik, who would later become the speaker of the Bosnian Serb parliament during wartime, told BIRN that the experience brought the two men closer.

“I think of him as a friend and good man. We went through that situation together and I do not wish to recall it. We remained close. I know he never hated anyone and never wanted bad things to happen to anyone,” said Krajisnik.

The nationalist Serb Democratic Party, SDS was founded in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1990 and Karadzic was named as its first president in July that year. The party was part of an anti-communist coalition, and initially fought for the country to remain part of Yugoslavia.

In an interview with Bosnian news agency SRNA, Karadzic insisted that he did not really want the job.

“I did not wish to be an active politician,” he said. “I did not want to lead Republika Srpska either, and I would not have done if it had not been for the events of the war.

He explained that he was just doing his duty: “My understanding of human destiny is such that I believe a man must honour his duties,” he said.

Calls for a ‘Greater Serbia’

The first multi-party elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina were held in November 1990. Together with Karadzic’s SDS, the biggest winners were two other nationalist parties – the Bosniak Party for Democratic Action and the Croatian Democratic Community. The three of them created a coalition.

Social Democratic Party politician Miro Lazovic recalled how he often spoke out against Karadzic’s aggressively pro-Serb political agenda at parliamentary sessions in the early 1990s.

“Karadzic proposed the creation of a Greater Serbia,” Lazovic told BIRN.

“Because of his politics and especially because of his claims that if Bosnia became independent, the Muslim people and the country would disappear, we in parliament had to call a referendum so citizens could say if they wanted an independent Bosnia and Herzegovina,” he said.

Karadzic warned Bosniaks about the dangers of an impending war in a speech in October 1991 in the Bosnian parliament, after Slovenia and Croatia had already declared independence from Yugoslavia. He said that leaving Yugoslavia would put Bosnia and Herzegovina on a “highway to hell”.

“I plead with you to fully understand that what you are doing is not good. The road that you are choosing for Bosnia and Herzegovina is the same highway to hell and suffering that Slovenia and Croatia have already taken,” he told lawmakers.

It was a speech that seemed to predict the brutality of the coming conflict, and the massacres that would follow.

“Do not think that you will not take Bosnia and Herzegovina to hell and the Muslim people maybe into extinction, because if there is a war, the Muslim people will not be able to defend themselves,” Karadzic said.

After Bosnia and Herzegovina became independent in 1992, after a vote that was opposed by Serbs who wanted to remain part of Yugoslavia, the war broke out.

Throughout the three-and-a-half year long conflict; Karadzic was the president of Republika Srpska and supreme commander of its armed forces.

During wartime, his most notorious statements were about Sarajevo, which was besieged by Serb forces for three-and-a-half years.

Karadzic denied that units under his command were guilty of deadly mortar attacks on the city. After the massacre at the Markale market, in which dozens of civilians died in 1994, Karadzic told the newspaper Borba: “We have a disciplined army… no one can fire without an express order.”

He also insisted that “Serbs will never leave Sarajevo and the city will be the capital of the future Serb state”.

In several interviews, he opposed international intervention in Bosnia, saying it would be “a dangerous precedent which would make any country unsafe and would disrupt democracy”. He also publically denied the responsibility for the Srebrenica massacres.

Speaking about that period, the wartime speaker of the Bosnian Serb parliament, Momcilo Krajisnik, insisted that Karadzic “always fought against crimes”.

“He did not want crimes and if there is justice, he will be acquitted,” said Krajisnik, who was himself sentenced by the UN court in The Hague to 20 years in prison for war crimes.

Miro Lazovic said however that he was certain that Karadzic would be convicted.

“The Hague Tribunal has already shown what it thinks of the leadership of the Bosnian Serbs and has found that their plan was to commit crimes. I have no doubt that Karadzic, as the embodiment of these policies, will be convicted,” he said.
Karadzic goes underground

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was set up in The Hague after thousands of non-Serbs were detained in concentration camps and hundreds killed forces in Prijedor in 1992 and after the shelling of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces.

The first indictment against Karadzic was raised in 1995, a few months after the Srebrenica genocide.

An arrest warrant for Karadzic was issued in 1996, but by that time, he was already on the run.

According to British journalist Julian Borger, who wrote a book about Karadzic’s fugitive years and arrest, the former Bosnian Serb president evaded capture for over a decade because international forces and the Serbian authorities were initially unwilling to arrest him, believing it could threaten the fragile post-war peace.

In the beginning, Borger says that Karadzic was hiding openly in Pale, but later, as pressure mounted for him to be brought to justice, he fled to Serbia and went into hiding.

The US offered a reward of almost $5 million for information leading to his whereabouts, but despite a lengthy manhunt by international and local security forces, Karadzic was only arrested 12 years later in the summer of 2008 in Belgrade, where he was living under the name of Dragan Dabic, disguised as a New Age mystic.

After a marathon six-year trial, during which more than 500 witnesses testified, the verdict is expected on Thursday. The prosecution has called for a life sentence, while Karadzic, who has continued to insist that he is not guilty, has said he should be acquitted.