Karadzic lived the good life with wine, song

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Radovan Karadzic lived the good life while hiding from justice for 11 years: he watched his diet, fell in love and hung out in a small bar where hardliners gathered to sing about his wartime exploits.

His long grey hair and bushy beard hid the face famous for explaining "ethnic cleansing" during the Bosnia 1992-95 war.

The tailored suits he wore in his days as leader of the Bosnian Serbs were replaced by loose linen clothing.

"He always bought the best," said Misko Kovijanic, owner of a small grocery shop near the concrete Belgrade high-rise where Karadzic lived as his alter ego, Dr Dragan Dabic, a healer and practitioner of alternative medicine.

"He was always looking for the yoghurt with the lowest percentage of fat. He drank red wine, used to buy the local Medvedja Krv (Bear's Blood) brand," he said.

"Once he asked me where I was from and I said I was from near Radovan Karadzic's home village. Now that I think about it, I was explaining to Radovan Karadzic who Radovan Karadzic was."

Karadzic liked to go to the small bar next door, a hangout for nationalists who liked to play the gusle, a one-string fiddle typical to Montenegro, where Karadzic was born.

When they played, they sang songs about wars, heroes and killing the infidel enemies of Serbdom. Many of the songs are about Karadzic and his wartime commander Ratko Mladic, both indicted for genocide against Bosnian Muslims and Croats.

Their portrait still hangs over the bar.

"The first time he came in, he sat next to the door and wrote down some of the lyrics," said Raso Vucinic, 26, a regular guest who often plays in the bar.

"He played the gusle once but didn't sing. I guess it would have been obvious it was him, it is difficult to disguise your voice when you sing. He said to us: 'Children, please keep the gusle alive. You are the most precious asset of our nation'."

"If I had known it was him I would have offered to hide him."

Even in the massive, anonymous tower blocks of the New Belgrade suburb, Karadzic stood out, always wearing a black hat and talking about his healing practices using "human quantum energy".

On his website he boasted he could cure everything from diabetes to impotence and specialized in "beautifying and rejuvenation". Treatments mostly involved putting his hands just over the patient's body, without touching them.

His motto was "you can always get help".

"I was not surprised to hear he was into that, I always knew he was gifted and possessed this vital energy," his brother Luka told Reuters.

"He fasts every Wednesday and Friday, and on all big Orthodox feasts. If you add it up it's more than 150 days of fasting a year."

Charming and mild-mannered, he was well liked in the neighborhood and among staff of a magazine to which he contributed articles on health and meditation.

Friends told local media he lived with a middle-aged brunette, and referred to her as the love of his life, although he is still married.

"Karadzic changed his social and physical identity, but he didn't change his psychological identity. He didn't have a split personality, he remained who he was," said psychologist Leposava Kron, director of the Belgrade Institute for Criminology.

For a man who is such an extreme extrovert, who needs people and applause so much, "it would be "psychological suicide if he doesn't have a public," she said.

(Additional reporting by Ljiljana Cvekic; Writing by Ellie Tzortzi; edited by Richard Meares)