THE real Dragan Dabic has emerged – and the 66-year construction worker was shocked to discover his identity had apparently been stolen by one of the world's most notorious war crimes suspects.
Officials believe Radovan Karadzic assumed Mr Dabic's identity as a cover during the autocratic rule of his mentor Slobodan Milosevic. They promised to track down anyone who helped the Bosnian Serb warlord stay on the run from genocide charges for n
early 13 years.
The true Dabic lives in Ruma, a Serbian town just north of Belgrade, according to Rasim Ljajic, a government official in charge of war crimes.
"Dabic's ID differs from Karadzic's only in the photographs of the two," Mr Ljajic said. That discovery certainly altered Mr Dabic's plans for the day.
"Instead of working in the garden, I'm being besieged by reporters and answering telephone calls," Mr Dabic said in Ruma.
"This is unfair. Instead of finding out who really cooked this up, I'm being questioned by police," added Mr Dabic, who bears no physical resemblance to Karadzic.
Officials were investigating whether Karadzic's ID was a fake or an official copy of Mr Dabic's original.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that Karadzic was earning the equivalent of £7000 a month at the time of his arrest.
Clinics where he used to work confirmed he charged £30 for a ten-minute consultation, rising to hundreds of pounds for full treatment.
He was so successful as a New Age healer that he travelled to Austria, Italy and Russia where he helped "cure" many wealthy exiled Serbs of a wide range of ailments.
Mina Minic, who helped to train Karadzic in his homeopathic role, said he was on the verge of moving to Russia when arrested.
Ms Minic said: "He was a good student; he learned quickly and very soon became a name in his own right.
"I thought at first he was an American spy because, although he seemed to have no qualifications, he was very well informed on medical matters. I thought he wanted to steal my knowledge of alternative medicine.
"I first met Karadzic in 2006 and at that time he was already preparing to move to Russia and work there as an alternative medicine doctor. He decided to stay to learn more from me because he believed it would give him a better start in Russia. He delayed, I suppose, because he was doing so well here. He was very much in demand."
WHAT NEXTRADOVAN Karadzic will be extradited to the United Nations tribunal in The Hague at the earliest on Monday, Vladimir Vukcevic, the Serbian war crimes prosecutor, said last night.
The leader of the Bosnian Serbs in the 1992-95 Bosnia war is in a Belgrade prison. The deadline to lodge a formal appeal against his handover to the war crimes court passed last night with Sveta Vujacic, the warlord's lawyer, refusing to confirm that he had taken that step.
Mr Vujacic says his client plans to defend himself.
The full article contains 507 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
