Radovan Karadžić

**Radovan Karadžić** born 19 June 1945 in Petnjica, Montenegro, Yugoslavia was a Bosnia and Herzegovinian politician.  He was in charge of part of the Bosnian Genocide.  From 1995 to 2008, he was a .  He was arrested on 21 July 2008 in Serbia.  In 2016, he was convicted of war crimes.

## Early life
Karadžić was the child of Vuko and Jovanka Karadžić.  His father, Vuko (1912–1987), was a shoemaker.  His mother, Jovanka (1922–2005), was a peasant girl from northern Montenegro.  Her maiden name was Jovanka Jakić.  She married Vuko in 1943, at age twenty.

Karadžić's father was in prison for most of his son's childhood.  During World War II, Yugoslavia had been taken over by Nazi Germany and the other Axis countries.  Karadžić's father had been a member of the Chetniks.  This was an army that supported Yugoslavia's original government.  Because he was in this army, he was put in prison after the war.

## Education
Karadžić moved to Sarajevo in 1960 to study psychiatry at the Sarajevo University School of Medicine.  In 1970, he studied anxiety and depression at Næstved Hospital in Denmark.  From 1974 to 1975, he got more medical training at Columbia University in New York City.

After he returned to Yugoslavia, Karadžić worked in the Koševo Hospital (the main hospital in Sarajevo). He was also a poet.  Another Serbian writer  him to go into politics.

In 1983, Karadžić started working at a hospital in a suburb of Belgrade called Voždovac.  With his partner, Momčilo Krajišnik, Karadžić got a loan that was meant to be used for improving agriculture.  Instead, he and his partner used the money to build themselves houses in Pale.  Pale was a Serb town above Sarajevo that the government had turned into a ski .

## Political life
In 1989, Karadžić helped create the Serb Democratic Party () in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The party's goal was to bring together the country's Bosnian Serbs.

In September 1991, the *Srpska Demokratska Stranka*  began to create areas in Bosnia-Herzegovina that were ruled only by Serbs.  On 15 October 1991, the Bosnian parliament voted that they wanted to rule themselves.  Nine days later, a separate Serb Assembly was created, to represent only the Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On 9 January 1992, the Bosnian Serb Assembly said they had created a new country: the Republic of the Serb people of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  On 28 February 1992, the Serb Republic approved its constitution.  It also said that it now controlled:
* The areas in Bosnia-Herzegovina that were ruled only by Serbs
* Parts of Bosnia-Herezogovina where the people were mostly Serbian 
* "All regions in which the Serbian people [are] a minority [because of] the Second World War genocide"

### President of Republika Srpska
On 6 and 7 April 1992, Europe and the United States accepted that Bosnia was an independent country.  Bosnia became a member of the United Nations on 22 May 1992. Karadžić was voted President of this Bosnian Serb government around 13 May 1992.  His powers included being in charge of the country's army.

## War crimes charges
As the head of the Bosnian Serb army, Karadžić was in charge of a  to get rid of all the Bosnian Muslims and Croats from villages that the Serbs wanted for themselves.  They also accused him of many other crimes, including:
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* Forcing non-Serbian Muslims to leave their homes because of their ethnicity and religion
* Persecution (treating a group of people badly) because of their race, religion, or political opinions
* Murder
* Terrorism against civilians
* Taking hostages
* Extermination (trying to kill an entire population of people: all non-Serbian Muslims)

Karadžić ran away so he could not be tried for these crimes.  Until 2008, he hid.  The United States government offered a $5&nbsp;million reward for his arrest.

## Arrest
Karadžić was arrested on 21 July 2008 in Belgrade. He had been pretending to be a doctor of alternative medicine, mostly in Belgrade but also in Vienna, Austria.  Karadžić was sent to an ICTY jail in the Hague on 30 July.  Karadžić said that the United States government had protected him while he was hiding, and this was why it took over ten years for him to be found.

Karadžić first appeared before a judge at the ICTY on 31 July 2008.  At that time, the ICTY had found 64 people guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide during the Yugoslav Wars.

The film *The Hunting Party* was based on Karadžić's life as a fugitive.

### Conviction and sentence
On 24 March 2016, Karadžić was found guilty of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.  He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Karadžić was found guilty of genocide for the Srebrenica massacre.  He was also convicted of persecution, extermination, deportation, ethnic cleansing, and murder.

## Photo gallery

File:Europe countries map en 2.png|Map of Europe that shows where Bosnia-Herzegovina is (colored blue; to the right of Italy)
File:Balkans05.png|Karadžić was President of the *Republika Srpska* (shown in pink)
File:Bsa controlled.png|With Karadžić in charge, Serbian soldiers took over all of the blue areas on this map

File:Sarajevo siege garbage.jpg|During the siege, garbage was too dangerous to collect
File:Sarajevo Siege ShellingDestruction.jpg|One of 35,000 buildings  by Serbian bombs
File:Sarajevo Skenderija Sniper Intersection.jpg|People hurry across a street called "Sniper Alley."  Serbian soldiers would shoot people as they crossed the street
File:Sarajevo siege bullet holed window.jpg|A mother and child walk along a street that Serbian soldiers have sniped

File:Mass Graves.jpg|Satellite photo showing mass graves (the areas in white)
File:Potoc2006.jpg|2006 funeral for people whose bodies were  from mass graves
File:Srebrenica Potocari Memorial 2.JPG|Graves for people who were re-buried after their bodies were recovered
File:Srebrenica massacre memorial wall of names 2009 2.jpg|Memorial "Wall of Names" of people killed in the massacre

File:Serbian youngsters.jpg|A Serbian teenager wearing a shirt that calls Karadžić a "Serbian hero"

## Notes
## References