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Details :
Category: Mass Murder
Location: Bosnia
Date: 1992 - 1996
Crime: Karadzic was a Bosnian Serb politician who is currently on trial for genocide and war crimes against Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats and other non-Serbs during the 'Siege of Sarajevo'.
Biography: Karadzic was born June 19, 1945 in Yugoslavia. Much of his childhood was spent without his father who remained imprisoned after World War II by the post war Communist regime. He studied psychiatry at the Sarajevo University School of Medicine and spent four years in Denmark studying neurotic disorders. After studying for two years at Columbia in the U.S., he returned to Yugoslavia and went to work at a hospital in Sarajevo. During this time, he would receive clandestine payments for issuing false evaluations to assist people who wanted early retirement and also to criminals seeking a plea of insanity. He was arrested for fraud and embezzlement and sentenced to three years in prison, for which he never served the sentence. By 1989, he was involving himself in politics and helped to create the Serbian Democratic Party.
In 1992, after Bosnia was recognized as an independent state, Karadzic was voted President. He assumed control of the military and quickly moved to replace anyone in a position of leadership who was in opposition to his regime. His war crimes charges are a result of his command responsibility as Supreme Commander of the Bosnian Serb armed forces. He is accused of being responsible for the deaths of 7,500 Muslims and for initiating the military Siege of Sarajevo resulting in the deaths of more than 10,000 with another 56,000 wounded. After his indictment in 1996, he fled the country and was a fugitive until July 2008, working in a clinic in Belgrade, Yugoslavia under an assumed name. During this time, there were large rewards posted for his capture and in July 2008, locals determined his true identity and turned him over to the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. His trial is ongoing.
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