Profile: Radovan Karadzic | Commentary: Misha Glenny | Opinion: David Owen | Pictures: end of the road for fugitive | Eyewitness: haunted woods in Srebrenica | Eyewitness: horror of Sarajevo siege | Factfile: the Balkans' recent history | Q&A: Karadzic arrest | World reaction to arrest |

Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb genocide suspect captured earlier this week, has decided to defend himself before the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, his lawyer said today.

Dr Karadzic, who stands indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity, was arrested in Belgrade on Monday evening after more than a decade on the run.

He evaded capture by disguising himself as a heavily bearded alternative health guru by the name of Dragan David Dabic, and lived in the suburbs of the Serb capital.

Today, his legal team announced that - if his appeal against being extradited to The Hague was unsuccessful - he would represent himself at his United Nations war crimes trial.

“Karadzic will have a legal team in Serbia that will help him with his defence but he will defend himself,” the Serbian Tanjug news agency quoted Svetozar Vujacic, Dr Karadzic's lawyer, as saying.

Under Serbian law, suspects have three days to appeal against their transfer to the UN war crimes court before a special committee approves the transfer. Dr Karadzic lodged his appeal yesterday.

The process of hearing the appeal could take up to nine days, but Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor has said that he expects Dr Karadzic to be sent to the UN court by next Monday or Tuesday at the latest.

Yesterday, a judge at a hastily convened war crimes court in Belgrade positively identified Dr Karadzic and read him the charges: 11 counts of war crimes, including genocide, for the massacre of 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica and the 12,000 deaths during the siege of Sarajevo.

There was astonishment when police revealed that Dr Karadzic had evaded capture by developing the alter ego Dr Dabic, and disbelief among those who had been taken in. Even his landlord had no idea who was renting the nondescript high-rise flat in New Belgrade.

“It was a brilliant camouflage,” said Goran Kojic, the editor-in-chief of a health magazine who knew Dr Dabic and published several of his articles on Serbian Orthodox meditation. “He left such a calm impression of a cultured man of great spirituality. He was funny, entertaining and eloquent, the sort of person you wanted as a friend.”

Today Mr Karadzic's lawyer confirmed that his client had now shaved off his beard and cut his hair. “He’s looking good. He had a hair cut, he shaved himself, and is in great shape. He now looks just like before,” he said.

The horrific crimes committed by forces under Dr Karadzic's command when he was political leader of the Bosnian Serbs in the 1990s include placing the Muslim-majority city of Sarajevo under siege. For 22 months, Serb artillery and snipers rained fire down on the city and 12,000 people were killed with numerous atrocities reported.

Then, in 1995, Bosnian Serb forces overran the UN safe-haven of Srebrenica. 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were separated from their families and massacred in a three day orgy of bloodshed. So great was the terror in the town that some victims took their own lives before they could be murdered, according to international prosecutors.

Dr Karadzic's arrest leaves the former General Ratko Mladic, Dr Karadzic’s military commander, as the most-wanted Bosnian Serb fugitive. Mr Mladic is widely believed to be hiding in Serbia, probably protected by sections of the Yugoslav military.

Serbia today said it hoped that helping to bring Dr Karadzic to justice would secure it European Union (EU) candidate status by the end of this year.

Vuk Jeremic, the country's Foreign Minister, was quoted in French newspaper Le Monde as saying he will also propose normalising diplomatic ties with European Union nations that recognized Kosovo’s independence.

Mr Jeremic added that he was "counting on France" as the current EU president, to secure candidate status for Serbia.

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