Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has long been one of the most wanted men in the world. His arrest has come after nearly 13 years on the run - during which time Serbia has come under increasing international pressure to catch him.
Accused of leading the slaughter of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats, he has twice been indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
The UN says his forces killed at least 7,500 Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica in July 1995 as part of a campaign to "terrorise and demoralise the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat population".
He was also charged over the shelling of Sarajevo, and the use of 284 UN peacekeepers as human shields in May and June 1995.
After the Dayton accord that ended the Bosnian war, the former nationalist president went into hiding - possibly in the mountainous south-eastern area of the Serb-controlled part of Bosnia - protected by paramilitaries.
 |  If The Hague was a real juridical body I would be ready to go there... but it is a political body that has been created to blame the Serbs  Radovan Karadzic |
International pressure to capture Mr Karadzic mounted in spring 2005 when several of his former generals surrendered and a video of Bosnian Serb soldiers shooting captives from Srebrenica shocked television viewers in former Yugoslavia.
Belgrade announced several arrests in connection with the video, which was first shown during the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
In early 2007, Nato troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina raided the homes of Mr Karadic's children, saying they believed Sasa and Sonja Karadzic to be part of a network supporting their father.
Mr Karadzic has denied the charges against him and refused to recognise the legitimacy of the UN tribunal.
"If The Hague was a real juridical body I would be ready to go there to testify or do so on television, but it is a political body that has been created to blame the Serbs," he told the UK-based Times newspaper in February 1996.
'Head of state'
Mr Karadzic was born in 1945 in a stable in Savnik, Montenegro.
| KARADZIC'S CV 1945: Born in Montenegro 1960: Moves to Sarajevo 1968: Publishes collection of poetry 1971: Graduates in medicine 1983: Becomes team psychologist for Red Star Belgrade football club 1990: Becomes president of SDS party 1992-1995: Bosnian war 2008: Arrested in Serbia |
His father, Vuk, had been a member of the Chetniks - Serb nationalist guerrillas who fought against both Nazi occupiers and Tito's communist partisans in World War II - and was in jail for much of his son's childhood.
His mother, Jovanka Karadzic, described her son as loyal, and a hard worker who used to help her in the home and in the field. She said he was a serious boy who was respectful towards the elderly and helped his school friends with their homework.
In 1960 he moved to Sarajevo, where he later met his wife, Ljiljana, graduated as a doctor, and became a psychologist in a city hospital.
He also became a poet and fell under the influence of the Serb nationalist writer Dobrica Cosic, who encouraged him to go into politics.
Years later, after working briefly for the Green Party, he helped set up the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) - formed in 1990 in response to the rise of national and Croat parties in Bosnia and dedicated to the goal of a Greater Serbia.
Less than two years later, as Bosnia-Hercegovina gained recognition as an independent state, he declared the creation of the independent Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina (later renamed Republika Srpska) with its capital in Sarajevo, and himself as head of state.
He was jointly indicted in 1995 along with the Bosnian Serb military leader, Ratko Mladic, for alleged war crimes they committed during the 1992-95 war.
He was obliged to step down as president of the SDS in 1996 as the West threatened sanctions against Republika Srpska, and later went into hiding.
On the run in October 2004 he managed to get a book published by a former associate, Miroslav Toholj. Miraculous Chronicles of the Night, set in 1980s Yugoslavia, tells the story of a man jailed by mistake after the death of former Yugoslav strongman Josip Broz Tito.
In May 2005, investigators reported two separate sightings of Radovan Karadzic - allegedly with his wife Ljiljana in south-eastern Bosnia and then with his brother Luka in Belgrade - as his mother was dying of cancer in Niksic, Montenegro.Original Source : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/876084.stm
