The double life of an infamous Serbian fugitive

As “Dragan Dabic,” the former psychiatrist worked for years in a clinic in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, practicing alternative medicine. He even lectured on videotape at local community centers, in an open and active life that would appear to be an extraordinary risk for one of the world’s most wanted men.

“For an older person, he had many interests,” said Maja Djelic, 28, a Belgrade resident who, like Karadzic, wrote for the magazine Healthy Life. She said they also met for coffee and conversations about acupuncture and the Internet. Karadzic, she recalled, was interested in improving his website.

“He said, when being introduced, ‘My name is Dr Dabic, but call me David’,” she said, adding that the two met last November.

“I still don’t believe it’s the same person,” she said, though the editor in chief of the magazine confirmed in interviews with numerous news outlets that Karadzic, under his assumed identity, had indeed written for Healthy Life.

To become a new person, officials said he used false documents. Most recently he lived in New Belgrade, a working-class neighbourhood known as a stronghold of Serbia’s far-right Radical Party. Despite what seemed to be the completeness of his disguise, it was not publicly known whether, as war crimes prosecutors have often alleged, the Serbian Government had long been aware of Karadzic’s location and was only waiting for a convenient moment to apprehend him.