BELGRADE, Serbia — Radovan Karadzic sent word he plans to defend himself against U.N. genocide charges, but his fellow Serbs were more enthralled with details that emerged Wednesday about his secret life: a mistress and a bogus family in the U.S.
With U.N. officials predicting Karadzic would be handed to the war-crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the next week, an attorney said the prisoner would handle his own defense, just like his former mentor, late Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006 while on trial.
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 asked for and got a shave and a haircut.
“He looks like new, exactly the same, only 14 years older,” Vujacic said.
Since the arrest was announced Monday, Serbs have been intrigued by how Karad zic transformed himself from a flashy suit-and-tie politician into a long-haired health guru living openly in their midst while being sought for alleged crimes during Bosnia’s 1992-95 ethnic bloodletting.
The metamorphosis was so complete that many of Karad zic’s neighbors said they were struggling to comprehend how the friendly man they knew as “Dr. Dragan David Dabic” was one of the world’s most wanted fugitives.
Belgrade media said Wednesday that the alias was taken from a Bosnian Serb who died in Bosnia’s capital in 1993 during the war.
Karadzic had a girlfriend named Mila whom he presented as an associate in his alternative-medicine business, said Zoran Pavlovic, a software engineer who says he was hired in February to set up a website for “Dabic” to advertise his expertise in “human quantum energy.”
Pavlovic told The Associated Press he visited Karadzic’s apartment in a grim suburb of the capital called New Belgrade once or twice a month to discuss the project.
The rented two-room flat was a mess, with things strewn about. Karadzic was always dressed in black and often complained that money was hard to come by, Pavlovic said.
“Frankly, he scared me a bit. I thought he belonged to some religious sect or something, with that beard and all, but I treated him as any other client,” Pavlovic said.
On one table was a framed photograph of four boys, all dressed in yellow Los Angeles Lakers T-shirts, Pavlovic said. He said Karadzic identified them as grandsons living in America.
Karadzic also claimed to have lived in New York and earned his diploma there, Pavlovic said.
“He told me he traveled often to America,” he said, “and I had no reason to disbelieve him.”
Karadzic remains officially married to Ljiljana Zelen Karadzic, who lives in their family house in the former Serb stronghold of Pale, in Bosnia, just east of Sarajevo.
