WAR CRIMES suspect Radovan Karadzic was living under a false name, had radically changed his appearance and was working as a specialist in alternative medicine when he was arrested after 11 years on the run, Serb prosecutors revealed yesterday.
Confounding rumours he had taken refuge in the remote mountains of Bosnia or a monastery in his native Montenegro, Karadzic (63) was seized on a Belgrade bus while travelling from one suburb of the city to another.
Serb officials said Karadzic had been read his United Nations war crimes tribunal indictment for genocide, and now had three days to appeal against extradition to The Hague, where the court is based.
If his appeal fails, he will be flown later this week to the Netherlands to face trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), created to prosecute crimes committed during the 1992-1995 Bosnia war.
Experts said prosecutor Serge Brammertz and his team of lawyers were expected to avoid a marathon like the trial that ended prematurely two years ago with the death in custody of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.
"Karadzic is the second most important defendant that we have had. It will not be a quick trial, but I believe it can be held as soon as possible - possibly within a few years," tribunal judge Frederik Harhoff said.
"He was using false documents under the name of Dragan Dabic," said Rasim Ljajic, Serbia's minister in charge of co-operation with the UN court.
"He was very convincing in hiding his identity. He earned his living practising alternative medicine, worked in a private clinic."
Prosecutors said Karadzic had been apprehended while travelling on a bus between New Belgrade, a suburb dominated by ranks of tower blocks, to a different location.
"He walked around freely, even appeared in public places. The people who rented him the apartment did not know his true identity," said Vladimir Vukcevic, Serbia's war crimes prosecutor.
"He was interrogated during the night. His identity was confirmed and he was handed the indictment. He is defending himself mainly with silence."
His lawyers complained that he had actually been arrested last Friday and held unlawfully until his capture was announced on Monday night.
"He just said that these people showed him a police badge and then he was taken to some place and kept in the room.
"And that is absolutely against the law, what they did," said lawyer Sveta Vujacic.
Another of Karadzic's lawyers said he had refused to answer questions and had called the case against him "a farce".
The UN tribunal indicted Karadzic in 1995 on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and breach of the Geneva Convention for his alleged role in leading the brutal ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs during Bosnia's 1992-1995 ethnic war.
He is accused of ordering the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, where Bosnian Serbs murdered some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, and of authorising the siege of Sarajevo, which killed about 12,000 people.
News of Karadzic's arrest sparked jubilant scenes in Sarajevo and brought a rare shower of praise from western leaders for Serbia's new government, an unlikely coalition of liberal democrats and socialists from the party formed by Milosevic, the former Serb president who started the wars which made Karadzic and his cohorts infamous.
The arrest of Karadzic is expected to help Belgrade secure closer ties with the EU, which insists that Serbia co-operate fully with the UN court and catch all war crimes fugitives before joining the union.
EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn yesterday called on the EU to allow Serbia to enjoy improved trading conditions, insisting Belgrade must have something to show for the step.