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June 19, 1945 - Radovan Karadžić

A trained psychiatrist who became the political architect of ethnic cleansing campaigns during the Bosnian War, he directed policies resulting in the massacre at Srebrenica and the prolonged siege of Sarajevo — among the most consequential atrocities on European soil since World War II. His conviction by the ICTY on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity marked one of the most significant war crimes verdicts of the post-Cold War era. The twelve years he spent evading capture, working quietly under an assumed identity in Belgrade, underscore how extensively he was sheltered after the war's end.

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Radovan Karadžić

Radovan Karadžić (Serbian Cyrillic: Радован Караџић, pronounced [râdovaːn kâradʒitɕ]; born 19 June 1945) is a Bosnian Serb former politician who served as the president of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War. He was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Trained as a psychiatrist, he co-founded the Serb Democratic Party in Bosnia and Herzegovina and served as the first president of Republika Srpska from 1992 to 1996. He was a fugitive from 1996 until July 2008, after having been indicted for war crimes by the ICTY. The indictment concluded there were reasonable grounds for believing he committed war crimes, including genocide against Bosniak and Croat civilians during the Bosnian War (1992–1995). While a fugitive, he worked at a private clinic in Belgrade, specializing in alternative medicine and psychology, under an alias.

He was arrested in Belgrade in 2008 and brought before Belgrade's War Crimes Court a few days later. Extradited to the Netherlands, he was placed in the custody of the ICTY in the United Nations Detention Unit of Scheveningen, where he was charged with 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is sometimes referred to by the Western media as the "Butcher of Bosnia", a sobriquet also applied to former Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) General Ratko Mladić.

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