Karadzic hid in plain sight since 1998

BELGRADE, Serbia — Since 1998, the world's most-wanted war crimes fugitive displayed a talent for eluding international justice. His secret? Hide in plain sight.

In a ruse worthy of any thriller, Radovan Karadzic transformed himself from a leader instantly recognizable by his famous shock of salt-and-pepper hair into a man resembling a New Age mystic, with a flowing white beard and black robe.

Believed to be protected by a coterie of ultranationalists, the former Bosnian Serb strongman — a doctor and psychiatrist who received training in the U.S. — worked at an alternative medicine clinic in Belgrade.

Karadzic's disguise was so effective that prosecutors say he walked freely around town without being noticed and even his landlords didn't know his true identity.

A photograph displayed by prosecutors at a news conference Tuesday showed a gaunt elderly man unrecognizable from the robust warlord who strutted brashly before his troops during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

That life on the run ended abruptly with Karadzic's capture Monday — an arrest made possible by the election of a new pro-Western government that tightened the dragnet around the war crimes suspect.

Many observers have long suspected that recently fallen prime minister Vojislav Kostunica, a nationalist with close ties to Karadzic during the Bosnian war, had shielded him from arrest.

Karadzic's capture has broad political implications — for the future of the U.N. war crimes tribunal, eventual closure of the cycle of Balkan blood feuds and for Serbia's fitful journey out of international isolation.

The wartime Bosnian Serb leader stands accused of genocide for masterminding the deadly siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, Europe's worst carnage since the end of World War II.

The fugitive had been masquerading as an expert in "human quantum energy" using the fake name "D.D. David" printed on his business card. The initials apparently stood for Dragan Dabic, an alias authorities said he used.

He even had his own Web site — www.psy-help-energy.com — and gave lectures before hundreds of people on alternative medicine. The site displays pictures of metallic bullet-shaped amulets and Orthodox crosses with wires running out of them.

TV footage provided by a local station to Associated Press Television News shows Karadzic sitting on a panel at a medical conference, glancing nervously at the cameraman next to him — another glimpse into his knife's-edge life of hiding in plain view.

Using his alias, Karadzic was a regular contributor to the Serbian alternative medicine magazine "Healthy Life;" its editor Goran Kojic said he was stunned when he saw the photo of Karadzic on TV and realized the bizarre truth.

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