BELGRADE, Saturday (AFP) - In the neighbourhood of Belgrade frequented by Radovan Karadzic, people who crossed paths with the former Bosnian Serb leader express disbelief the genocide suspect freely roamed their part of town under heavy disguise.
Once a “dormitory” for communist-era workers, the apartment blocks of New Belgrade have come under the gaze of the world media this week after revelations about his guise as a guru of alternative medicine.
At the block of flats where “Dr. Dragan Dabic” last lived, residents recalled a kind man who they would never have guessed was Karadzic, one of the world's most wanted men.
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| This undated picture shows Radovan Karadzic (L), alias healer Dragan Dabic, posing with Serbian “bio energy expert” Mina Minic in an undisclosed place in Belgrade. AP. Inset: the real Dragan Dabic, a 66-year old peasant and construction worker, poses outside his home with his identification card, in Ruma, Serbia, Friday. AFP |
“He was unrecognisable,” a woman, who like all residents declined to give her name, told AFP.
One young girl remembers Karadzic, who sported a totally altered appearance to the one they knew, as “amiable and well-mannered ... But I always had the impression he was scrutinising and analysing me.”
“It's as though a hunted animal has been in hiding here,” said an elderly lady, reflecting the opinion of hardcore nationalists from the other side of Serbia's deeply divided society.
The news of his arrest on Monday came as a surprise for most of the residents, some already giving up to the myths of his alter ego, others questioning international justice, blaming it of anti-Serb bias.
“Why are Serbs the only ones tried in The Hague (the seat of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia), while the others are set free?” she asked.
She said Karadzic had been living for a month and a half in a building. “Who's guilty? I don't know. But why are the others being set free?” she insisted, referring to the UN tribunal's acquittal of former Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj and Bosnian Muslim commander Naser Oric.
The ICTY indicted Karadzic for genocide and war crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia.
The charges are mainly related to two of Europe's worst atrocities since World War II, the 44-month siege of Sarajevo which killed more than 10,000 people and the Srebrenica massacre of some 8,000 Muslim males.
While in hiding, Karadzic completely changed his appearance, donning large wire-rimmed glasses and even a white Panama hat atop his long white hair and bushy beard. “He could have been a painter from Montmartre,” a Paris quarter known for its numerous artists, said one elderly man.
All agreed that Karadzic, was affable, but completely unrecognisable from the man who appeared on their television screens as the leader of Bosnia's Serbs during the neighbouring former Yugoslav republic's 1992-1995 war.
In a nearby drinking hole, the support for nationalists was obvious.
Photographs of Karadzic and his wartime military leader Ratko Mladic -- still on the run from the UN war crimes court -- are conspicuous above the bar.
Beside it, a portrait of former Yugoslavia's communist leader Josip Broz Tito leans on a picture of late Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006 while on trial before the tribunal.
Karadzic came here twice or three times a week, sipping on glasses of red wine named “Medvedja Krv” -- Bear's Blood -- or listening to traditional music often glorifying Serb heroes, locals said.
Many called him a “professor,” but he never publicly expressed his opinion on politics, they agreed.
At a nearby newsstand, a vendor said Karadzic often bought the nationalist tabloid Pravda, as well as Politika, the influential Serbian broadsheet newspaper.
Many Serb refugees from Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo moved into this area at the end of the 1990s wars that broke up the old Yugoslav federation, explained one woman, not far from the building where Karadzic was hiding.
“It's good that he's going to be sent to The Hague,” she said, but admitted that not many in her neighbourhood agreed with her. “He deserves it. And he has to defend himself” before the UN court, she added.
Not all Serbs should have to “suffer just for one man,” she said in reference to the country's stalled European Union membership ambitions, which hinge on the arrest of war crimes fugitives.
The woman, who explained she had taken part in all street protests against the Milosevic's autocratic regime till his ouster in 2000, said however that she was sure his hideout was not a secret.
“I am sure that the (new) Serbian authorities knew where he was all this time,” she said. |
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