Identity

The real Dragan Dabić

Of all the surreal details about Radovan Karadžić’s second life as a fugitive war criminal (hiding behind the guise of a practitioner of alternative medicine in Belgrade, described as “a kindly Santa who cured ailments”) perhaps the most puzzling is his choice of alias. Karadžić was known to his patients as Dr. Dragan ‘David’ Dabić.

The actual Dragan Dabić was a Bosnian Serb from Sarajevo killed in 1993 by one of Karadžić’s snipers while waiting in line outside a humanitarian relief organization. He was killed outside of the Loris building, a block away from my apartment.

I went with one of my colleagues to meet Dragan Dabić’s only surviving relative, his brother Mladen, in a cafe in Grbavica. He didn’t have a clue why Karadžić chose to take his brother’s name, but was outraged that the killer of his brother should go further and assume his identity. “When I heard the news that war criminal Radovan Karadžić is using my brother’s name, I could not believe it. It was horrible. This was an act of dishonour to a person, who was killed by the army commanded by Karadžić,” Mladen told my colleague.

Dragan Dabić's brother, Mladen Dabić

The ID Karadžić used was issued in 1999 through “certain structures” close to Milošević’s Serbian Democratic Party. “It is obvious that he started his parallel life a long time ago,” said Vladimir Vukicevic, prosecutor for Serbia’s war crimes chamber.

It is a sick twist, but not beyond the imagination, that Karadžić should take the name of one of his victims; a victim who was also one of his “countrymen”, for whom he waged a genocidal campaign that ultimately claimed the lives of Dabić and more than 25,000 other Serbs. So much for that casus belli.