Misha Glenny writes for the New Statesman, July 24:
Looking a little like God in a Cecil B DeMille film, Radovan Karadzic was genuinely unrecognisable when he was arrested on a Belgrade bus last Monday evening. Yet even more astonishing was the news that he had been working as a crystal-rubbing therapist promoting well-being to audiences around Serbia. The killer as New Age healer – you couldn’t make it up.
Several people who came into regular contact with Dragan David Dabic were clearly shocked to discover that he was in fact Karadzic. “It never occurred to me,” said Goran Kojic, editor of Belgrade’s Healthy Life magazine, who explained that Dabic had referred to himself as “a researcher in psychology and bioenergy”. As recently as May, he made a public appearance as a therapist at a health festival, lecturing on “How to Enhance One’s Own Bioenergies”.
However, Glenny says that Belgrade’s intelligence services are “among the best-informed in Europe,” and they knew exactly where Karadzic was. The wily Karadzic may have also stolen the identity of one of his own victims, according to The Guardian:
Karadzic, who is accused of genocide, was living and working under the name of Dragan David Dabic when he was arrested.
According to Serbian officials, Dabic died in 1993 in Sarajevo. Serbian media reported he was a Serb fighter who died in the war.
But reports from Sarajevo said he was a civilian killed by Karadzic’s troops who besieged the Bosnian capital during the 1992-95 war.
Meanwhile, BalkanInsight reports that the Serbian Radical Party is plannning daily protests in Belgrade against the deportation of their hero to The Hague. Belgrade’s Republic Square was filled with 300 Karadzic supporters July 23, many wearing t-shirts with the accused war criminal’s image. Journalists were reportedly physically attacked at the protest—with those from Bosnia singled out.
See our last post on the Karadzic arrest.
