HOWZAT

A judge at a hastily convened war crimes court in the Serbian capital positively identified Dr Karadzic and read him the charges: 11 counts of war crimes, including genocide, for the massacre at Srebrenica and the siege of Sarajevo. His lawyer said that he was likely to lodge an appeal on Friday.

Dr Karadzic was last seen in public in the eastern Bosnian town of Han Pijesak in July 1996. During his years on the run he developed an extensive network that gave him funds, shelter and apparent impunity from the law. He was like a murderous Scarlet Pimpernel: some reports claimed that he was supported by Serb Orthodox priests who took him into their monasteries; others that he was backed by organised crime groups flush with the profits of war. He was said to flit between Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro with ease, protected by a posse of heavily armed bodyguards.

The contrast with Saddam Hussein, found hiding in a hole after eight months on the run, and Dr Karadzic’s years of liberty is stark.

Richard Holbrooke, the US diplomat who brokered the Dayton accords, told The Times: “There was a lack of political will to get Karadzic. Nato could have picked him up easily when his green Mercedes was parked outside his headquarters in Pale. But Nato commanders said they had the authority but not the obligation.”

Those who knew him as Dr Dabic told The Times that he was regarded as an expert in silence and meditation. One of his lectures was called “The relationship between calmness and meditation”. He also gave lectures on healthy living. During the most recent, visitors were offered free massages, yoga, t’ai chi and lessons in the Brazilian dance capoeira. His website advertises energy healing and beauty treatments and offers to cure conditions ranging from impotence and other “sexual disturbances” to diabetes, asthma, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis.

Using the name D. D. David, he promoted his David Wellbeing Programme, based on the use of “human quantum energy”. His website says that people are “programmed” to live to between 120 and 130, an age that could be reached by those who had his treatments. Those who visited his lectures told local media that they were “very good” and visited by up to 400 participants at a time.

Few in Belgrade believe that Dr Karadzic’s biblical beard and double life as an alternative medicine practitioner would fool one of the region’s most efficient secret services. It is more likely that the Serb Government has long known of his whereabouts but only with the election of a pro-Western administration was there the will to arrest Dr Karadzic.

European foreign ministers said that the arrest demonstrated “the commitment of the new Government in Belgrade to contribute to peace and stability in the Balkan region” and represented “an important step” to bringing Serbia closer to the EU.

The Netherlands, criticised for the way that its lightly armed peacekeepers stood aside at Srebrenica, said that Serbia must arrest the remaining suspects, Mr Mladic and Goran Hadzic.

The first sign of the improvement in relations between Brussels and Belgrade could come next week with the implementation of a stabilisation and association agreement, which has been put on hold until Serbia “fully co-operates” with The Hague.

Yesterday Dr Karadzic’s daughter, Sonia, banned with other family members from leaving Bosnia over suspicions that they helped him to elude capture, pleaded for the restrictions to be lifted so that she could visit him before his transfer to The Hague. In Sarajevo the authorities said that they had yet to make a decision.

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