Radovan Karadzic: war crimes suspect, new age healer

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - With his mane of white hair, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was the face of the Bosnian Serb republic as thousands were killed in the violent break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

He was arrested on a bus in Belgrade in July last year after 11 years on the run, disguised as a new age healer with a flowing beard, and transferred to a U.N. detention unit in The Hague to face charges of genocide in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

He emerged later that month shorn of the hair and visibly aged. But Monday he boycotted the start of his war crimes tribunal, leaving an empty chair and angering dozens of family members of wartime victims who had traveled to The Hague to witness the start of his trial.

Karadzic, 64, faces life in prison on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide over the Srebrenica massacre. He is also accused of the 43-month siege of Sarajevo.

Karadzic has been representing himself, a combative suspect during preparations for trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

He has unsuccessfully tried to have charges against him dropped by claiming immunity and delaying the start of the trial.

Karadzic, who denies all charges, says his war crimes trial is the last chance for the truth of Srebrenica to be revealed and is adamant his efforts can prove vital to Serbia's future.

"This is the last ever opportunity for us to clarify what happened in Bosnia, and particularly in Srebrenica," Karadzic said in July.

SREBRENICA

Karadzic was once President of Republika Srpska -- the self- proclaimed Bosnian Serb republic -- and supreme commander of its armed forces.

"We hope it is time that justice will be done. We hope that he ... is made responsible," said Jasna Causevic, from the group Society for Threatened Peoples.

Karadzic is accused of orchestrating the murder by Serb forces of about 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in "both organized and opportunistic executions" at Srebrenica in July 1995.

"Bodies are being moved to Srebrenica in order to prove a point," he has argued. "Everything in relation to Srebrenica that has been presented so far is erroneous. There are people coming up now, living people whose names are on the tombstones."

Prosecutor Hildegard Uertz-Retzlaff has countered by saying: "To us it was actually no doubt that the people in the mass graves were actually the men and boys from Srebrenica."

Karadzic says the Hague-based ICTY is a tool of NATO and is exhaustively preparing for a trial he says could take a decade.

"For such a major case, one year of preparation is quite limited. Mr. Karadzic's fair trial rights should have ensured him more time to prepare his defense," Alexander Knoops, a professor of international criminal law at Utrecht University said recently.

Asked at his first hearing if he would like anyone to be notified of his detention, Karadzic said: "I don't believe there is anyone who doesn't know that I'm in the detention unit."

Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade after 11 years on the run and after the tribunal issued an arrest warrant in July 1996.

Born on June 19, 1945 in a hamlet in the mountains of Montenegro, Karadzic is a former psychiatrist who became president of the Bosnian Serbs and led them into a 1992-1995 war that killed 100,000 people.

"I do not regret my own role," Karadzic told Reuters in a written interview in August. "I regret what happened during the war in Bosnia -- the many lives that were lost, the suffering of people of all ethnicities."

(Editing by Dominic Evans)