Karadzic became one of world's most wanted men

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who was arrested on Monday, saw himself as a defender of Serbs during the 1992-95 Bosnian war but ended up a fugitive wanted on genocide charges.

His 11 years at large had long been a stumbling block to Serbia's European Union aspirations.

A professional psychiatrist and amateur poet of humble origins, he became president of the self-declared Bosnian Serb Republic before NATO forces began snatching suspects wanted by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague in 1997.

Of the six republics that made up federal Yugoslavia, Bosnia was to pay the highest price in lives for independence and Serbs under him were held responsible for most of the 100,000 deaths.

The Hague tribunal indicted Karadzic in July 1995 for authorising the shooting of unarmed Sarajevo civilians and making hostages of U.N. peacekeepers.

He was indicted again four months later for orchestrating the slaughter of some 8,000 Muslim men after Serb forces seized the U.N.'s Srebrenica "safe area" in eastern Bosnia.

Karadzic protested his innocence and dismissed the tribunal as a "political court". But in 1997, having lost power, he went underground and to this day loyalists see him as saviour of the Serbs, a hero hounded by foreign powers.

HUMBLE ORIGINS

Karadzic was born on June 19, 1945 in a mountain hamlet in Montenegro and raised in poverty by parents who despised the communist rule of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito. His father was a Serb nationalist fighter who was wounded by Tito's partisans at the close of World War Two and imprisoned.