Radovan Karadžić

Radovan Karadžić Радован Караџић
1st President of Republika Srpska
In office 7 April 1992 – 19 July 1996
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Biljana Plavšić
Personal details
Born	(1945-06-19) 19 June 1945 Petnjica, Yugoslavia
Nationality	Serb
Political party	SPD
Spouse	Ljiljana Zelen Karadžić
Signature	File:Radkaradzicsig.PNG

Radovan Karadžić (Serbian Cyrillic: Радован Караџић) (born June 19, 1945) is a former Serb politician, poet and psychiatrist and is currently a fugitive indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. There is currently an outstanding international arrest warrant against Karadžić following the Rule 61 of ICTY which concluded that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accused has committed the crimes in question including genocide. The United States government has since offered a $5 million award for his and Ratko Mladić's arrests. His life as a fugitive was the basis for the film The Hunting Party.

Early life

Karadžić was born in Petnica near Šavnik,Yugoslavia to a family hailing from the Drobnjaci Serb clan. His father, Vuko, had been a member of the Chetniks - the remnants of the army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. His father was in jail for much of his son's childhood. Radovan Karadžić moved to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1960 to pursue his studies in psychiatry at the Sarajevo University School of Medicine. During 1974 and 1975 he spent a year pursuing medical training at Columbia University in New York. Subsequent to his return to Yugoslavia, he worked in the Koševo Hospital. He also became a poet and fell under the influence of the Serbian writer Dobrica Ćosić, who encouraged him to go into politics. Karadžić is considered a war hero for some Serbs.

Political life

In 1989 he co-founded the Serbian Democratic Party (Srpska Demokratska Stranka) in Bosnia-Herzegovina which aimed at gathering the Republic's Serb community and leading them in joining Croatian Serbs in seceding from their respective countries and joining Serbia.

A separate Serb Assembly was founded on October 24, 1991, in order to exclusively represent the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The leading Serb political party in Bosnia and Herzegovina, led by Radovan Karadžić, organized the creation of "Serb autonomous provinces" (SAOs) within Bosnia and the establishment of an assembly to represent them. In November 1991, the Bosnian Serbs held a referendum which resulted in an overwhelming vote in favour of staying in a common state with Serbia and Montenegro. On January 9, 1992, the Bosnian Serb Assembly proclaimed the Republic of the Serb people of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Република српског народа Босне и Херцеговина / Republika srpskog naroda Bosne i Hercegovine). On February 28, 1992, the constitution of the Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was adopted and declared that the state's territory included Serb autonomous regions, municipalities, and other Serbian ethnic entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it was declared to be a part of the federal Yugoslav state.

File:Pavle, Karadzic & Mladic.jpg

Patriarch Pavle with Radovan Karadzic and general Ratko Mladic

On February 29, and March 1, 1992 a referendum on the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Yugoslavia was held. The Serbs boycotted the referendum while Bosniaks and Croats turned out, and 64% of eligible voters voted 98% in favor of independence despite Bosnian laws and the constitution, which required consensus from all three people groups. On April 6 1992, Bosnia was recognized by the UN as an independent state. Karadžić became the first president of the Bosnian Serb administration in Pale on or about 13 May 1992 after the breakup of Yugoslavia. At the time he assumed this position, his de jure powers, as described in the constitution of the Bosnian Serb administration, included, but were not limited to, commanding the army of the Bosnian Serb administration in times of war and peace, and having the authority to appoint, promote and discharge officers of the army.

Despite being a supporter of the Greater Serbia idea, Karadžić has not been hesitant to find support among fellow Orthodox countries such as Russia and Greece. In February 1994, for instance, he secretly contacted the Greek government and proposed the creation of some sort of Greek-Serbian confederation based on the known Serbian-Greek Friendship, an idea which Milošević had also proposed in 1992.

Karadžić is accused of having ordered the ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks.

Fugitive

Authorities missed arresting Karadžić in 1995, when he was an invitee of the United Nations. During his visit, he was nearly handed a service of process, but this was swatted down by security before it could reach his hand. The Courts ruled that Karadžić had immunity under the United Nations "Headquarters Agreement". Since 1996, he has been a fugitive indicted for war crimes by the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia; the Interpol warrant cites assault, crimes against humanity, crimes against life and health, genocide, grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva conventions, murder, plunder, and violations of the laws or customs of war. The indictment charges Karadžić on the basis of his individual criminal responsibility (Article 7(1) of the Statute) and superior criminal responsibility (Article 7(3) of the Statute) with:

• Two counts of genocide (Article 4 of the Statute - genocide, complicity in genocide);
• Five counts of crimes against humanity (Article 5 of the Statute - extermination, murder, persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds, persecutions, inhumane acts (forcible transfer);
• Three counts of violations of the laws or customs of war (Article 3 of the Statute - murder, unlawfully inflicting terror upon civilians, taking hostages);
• One count of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions (Article 2 of the Statute - willful killing).

In his defense, his supporters say that he is no more guilty than any other war-time political leader. His ability to evade capture for over a decade has made him an international hero among the Bosnian Serbs, despite an alleged deal with Richard Holbrooke. In 2001, hundreds of supporters demonstrated in support of Karadžić in his home town. In March 2003, his mother, Jovanka, publicly urged him not to surrender.

In November 2004, British defence officials conceded that military action was unlikely to be successful in bringing Karadžić and other suspects to trial, and that putting political pressure on Balkan governments would be more likely to succeed.

In 2005, Bosnian Serb leaders called on Karadžić to surrender, stating that Bosnia and Serbia could not move ahead economically or politically while he remained at large. After a failed raid in May, on July 7 2005 NATO troops arrested Karadžić's son, Aleksandar (Saša) Karadžić but released him after 10 days . On July 28, Karadžić's wife, Ljiljana Zelen Karadžić, made a call for him to surrender after, in her words, "enormous pressure" had been put onto her.

On February 1 2007 Reuters reported that Karadžić is hiding in Russia citing monitored telephone conversations, an allegation denied by the Russian government.

On January 10 2008 the BBC reported that the passports of his closest relatives had been seized. In February 21, 2008, at the time Kosovo gained independence, portraits of Radovan Karadzic were on display during Belgrade’s Kosovo is Serbia protest.

Bibliography

• 1990: Crna bajka (Svjetlost, Sarajevo)
• 1992: Rat u Bosni: kako je počelo
• 1994: Ima čuda, nema čuda
• 2001: Od Ludog koplja do Crne bajke (Dobrica knjiga, Novi Sad)
• 2004: Čudesna hronika noći (IGAM, Belgrade)
• 2005: Pod levu sisu veka (Književna zajednica "Veljko Vidaković", Niš)

Quotes

• "This, what you are doing, is not good. This is the path that you want to take Bosnia and Herzegovina on, the same highway of hell and death that Slovenia and Croatia went on. Don't think that you won't take Bosnia and Herzegovina into hell, and the Muslim people maybe into extinction. Because the Muslim people cannot defend themselves if there is war here." -Radovan Karadžić, speaking at the Bosnian parliament[1], October 14, 1991. (The term "Muslim people" refers to the people now known as Bosniaks.)

• "Today, from the perspective of the Serbian nation, it is only acceptable to be independent, that we may not be dominated, that the numerical superiority of another nation doesn't influence us, that our fate will not be determined by the percentage of Muslims in Bosnia. That is our right!" - Radovan Karadžić in an interview, 1991

• "The Serbs have only two friends: God, and the Greeks." -Radovan Karadžić, during a rally organized to express support for Serbs in Athens, Greece, 1995.

• "Sarajevans will not be counting the dead. They will be counting the living" -Radovan Karadžić in an interview regarding the siege of Sarajevo, 1993

See also

• Bosko Radonjich
• Bosnian War
  • Bosnian Genocide
  • Srebrenica Massacre
• International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
• Jovan Rašković
• Ratko Mladić
• Republika Srpska
  • Army of Republika Srpska
  • Serbian Democratic Party
• Serb propaganda

External links

• The World's Most Wanted Man by PBS-Frontline
• ICTY indictment
• Interpol Warrant
• Profile: Radovan Karadzic
• Finding Karadzic blog
• "Is Poetry a War Crime? Reckoning for Radovan Karadzic the Poet Warrior" by Jay Surdukowski
• "The Hague against Justice Revisited: The Case of Dr. Radovan Karadžić" by Kosta Cavoski
• Interview with Karadžić
• Another interview with Karadžić