LONDON: Slobodan Milosevic died in custody, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in an air raid and Saddam Hussein is on trial. But on July 19, it will be 10 years since Radovan Karadzic announced his retirement from politics and disappeared from public view.

Karadzic was the psychologist for Red Star Belgrade football team before co-founding the Serbian Democratic party in 1990, creating the independent Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and installing himself as head of state. In 1995, he was indicted along with the Bosnian Serb military leader General Ratko Mladic on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

Karadzic has led his pursuers a merry dance ever since, managing to publish a novel, a play and a book of poems (said to be “as bad in the original as they sound in the English translation”) while on the run. His movements are known only to a handful of close aides, including, allegedly, a Scottish mercenary in his forties. The Orthodox church is thought to offer him close protection and he remains a hero to many Serbs.

International attempts to track him down have met with little success. In April 2004, special forces stormed a church building and seriously injured a priest and his son.

Neither have attempts to put pressure on Karadzic’s family borne any fruit. In March 2003, his mother, Jovanka, appealed publicly for him to surrender. In July 2005, his son, Aleksandar, was arrested on suspicion of helping his father but released after 10 days. Later the same month, Karadzic’s wife, Liljana, went on television and appealed with “all my heart and soul” for him to surrender. “I had to choose between loyalty to you and loyalty to our children and grandchildren,” she said.

The death of Milosevic in March led to renewed hopes that the noose might tighten around Karadzic. Instead, the emphasis seems to have shifted to his former military leader, Mladic, whose capture some observers think would be more cathartic for the country.

In May, the EU called off talks with Serbia over closer ties because of its failure to hand over the general. “He is almost certainly being protected by the Yugoslav People’s Army,” says Charles Grant, the director of the Centre for European Reform.

Karadzic is thought to be in the remote mountains of north-west Montenegro, near his home town of Niksic. “We are doing everything we can to find him,” says Lieutenant Commander Karen Halsey, spokeswoman for EU Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina. “We would love to see him behind bars.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service