The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Belgrade

Top war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic worked in a medical clinic under a false name and had tried to conceal his identity with a white beard before his arrest, a Serbian minister said Tuesday.

"Karadzic used false documents with the name Dragan Dabic," Rasim Ljajic, the minister in charge of cooperation for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), told a Belgrade press conference. "Karadzic was not a Serbian citizen and he was very convincing in hiding his identity," said Ljajic, who held up a picture of Karadzic with almost hippy-like white hair and a long beard.

"He was working and performing alternative medicine, making money that way, he was working in a private medical practice, and his last residence was in New Belgrade."

Of all the many fugitives of the UN war crimes court, the least was known about the whereabouts of Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb political leader who was arrested near Belgrade on Monday.

He was last seen in public in the eastern Bosnian town of Han Pijesak in July 1996, and previously thought to have hidden away in Serb-controlled parts of Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia.