Serbia seeks key to Karadzic's false identity

BELGRADE, Serbia---- Radovan Karadzic was preparing his false identity during the autocratic rule of his mentor, an official said Thursday, promising to track down the people who helped the Bosnian Serb warlord stay on the run from genocide charges.

Bruno Vekaric, spokesman for Serbia's war crimes prosecutor, said investigators are trying to determine the true identity of Dragan Dabic — the name Karadzic used during his 12-year flight.

Officials said Karadzic was captured in Belgrade on Monday and is awaiting extradition to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. However, Karadzic's lawyer insisted his client was captured last Friday.

The lawyer, Sveta Vujacic, said Karadzic instructed him to file a lawsuit against "unidentified persons" who "abducted" Karadzic last Friday. Vujacic said Karadzic was taken off a public bus in a Belgrade suburb, hooded and transferred to an unknown location where he was kept for three days.

"We have three witnesses who have contacted us, who saw all this," Vujacic said.

According to Serbian officials, Dabic — the last name Karadzic assumed — died in 1993 in Sarajevo. Serbian media reported that Dabic was a Serb fighter who died in the 1992-95 war.

But in Sarajevo, media reports said he was a civilian killed by Karadzic's troops as they besieged the Bosnian capital during the war.

The discrepancies surfaced because there were several men with that name in Sarajevo at the time.

Vekaric refused to speculate. "There are seven Dragan Dabics in Sarajevo, dead or alive," he told The Associated Press.

Vekaric said Karadzic obtained the false papers while former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's regime was still in power until its ouster in a popular revolt in October 2000.

He said the fake ID card bearing the name of Dragan Dabic was issued to Karadzic in Ruma, a town north of Belgrade, and a notorious paramilitary commander there was apparently involved in the paperwork.

The commander, Slobodan Medic, is now on trial in connection with the killings of about 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995 by Karadzic's troops.

Those suspected of helping Karadzic evade justice while on the run will be prosecuted, Vekaric said. He also hoped those helpers could be used to track down the remaining war crimes fugitives, including Bosnian Serb wartime military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic.

"The point is to finish The Hague story," he said, referring to the U.N. court, which has indicted both Karadzic and Mladic with genocide and crimes against humanity. "Whoever was helping Karadzic was committing a criminal act, and they know it."

Karadzic sent word he plans to defend himself against U.N. genocide charges. But his fellow Serbs were more enthralled with details that have emerged about his secret life: a mistress, a bogus family in the U.S., and regular visits to the Madhouse bar and its photo of his beardless days as wartime political leader of Bosnian Serbs.

With U.N. officials predicting Karadzic would be handed to the tribunal in the next few days, an attorney said the prisoner would handle his own defense, just like his former mentor Milosevic, who died in 2006 while on trial in The Hague.

Karadzic will do it looking like his old self, without the bushy white beard and long gray hair that hid his face when he was arrested by Serbian authorities, said his lawyer, Sveta Vujacic. Karadzic, who transformed himself from a flashy suit-and-tie politician into a long-haired health guru living openly in Belgrade, asked for and got a shave and a haircut on Wednesday.

"His new life was fascinating. He hid in the open," said criminologist Leposava Kron.