Radovan Karadzic explains why he became "Dr. Dabic"

Radovan Karadzic explains why he became "Dr. Dabic"

"After stepping down from power I moved freely, convinced that Holbrook was keeping his word, but voices were arriving that he could not fulfill it, and that NATO preferred my liquidation to my arrest. (Chief Hague Tribunal Prosecutor) Carla Del Ponte confirmed it. I decided to lead them away from my family home, and my discrete 'habitation' thus began," Karadzic said.

He stressed that after the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djidjic (in 2003) and the passing of the Law on Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, he thanked the people who provided him with security, and started leaving the house late at night to go shopping and for a walk - and that he "appeared" to his neighbors because the police started searching for members of the Zemun Clan gang in empty apartments, "that is, apartments that the neighbors claimed were empty."

"The most important camouflage was to get down to 80 kilograms from the 112 that I weighed during he war. In addition, I wore fairly big shirts, turtlenecks and other clothes that became big in this way, so my appearance did not point to this being me. I had to speak Ekavian (the dialect of Serbian spoken in Serbia), that was not difficult. Then it so happened that I stumbled upon a lecture, while looking into healthy eating, so I sort of accidentally joined all that," Karadzic told the daily, and continued: "At the same time, I ran out of money. So I started giving lectures and doing consulting work for some companies, and soon I also became a consultant for several private doctor's practices. I attended and passed a parapsychology course, at first out of curiosity, but without enthusiasm. My teacher was a very unusual man, very gifted, although he didn't know much about the subject. He gave me the name 'David'."

The Hague Tribunal last year found the former president of the Serb entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina - who had been hiding in Belgrade as "Doctor Dragan Dabic" and "D.D. David" - guilty of war crimes and genocide and sentenced him to 40 years in prison, a ruling that his legal team has appealed.