The Bosnian Serb Radovan Karadzic was sentenced to life in jail for the war crimes committed in the 1990s, Deutsche Welle reported. The International Criminal Tribunal’s verdict said the 73-year-old is guilty of multiple crimes against humanity and will spend rest of his life in prison.
Radovan Karadzic led the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska as its forces tried to cleanse Bosniak Muslims from Serb-controlled areas of the country in the mid-1990s. On Wednesday, Mr Karadzic was convicted of the 1995 genocide of Bosniaks from Srebrenica, terrorising the civilian population of Sarajevo with a long-running campaign of shelling and sniper attacks. He was found guilty for the persecution and extermination of Bosniaks and Croats in 20 municipalities across the country and taking UN peacekeepers hostage as well.
After the Yugoslav war ended, Karadzic avoided capture for 11 years. He spent much of that time posing as an “alternative medicine specialist” Dragan Dabic in Belgrade, sporting a thick bushy beard, long hair and thick eyeglasses. Despite that trick, the ‘spiritual leader’ was arrested by the Serbian authorities in 2008 and delivered to the Hague. During his trial, the Bosnian Serb accused judges of biasing and conducting a “political” case against him.
The final verdict didn’t impress Karadzic who listened to most of the verdict sitting impassively in a dark suit, his white hair swept back. He was told to stand to hear his sentence being extended.
