Serbia Unmasks 'Real Dragan Dabic'

Belgrade _ A disguised Radovan Karadzic was using the identity of a man named ‘Dragan Dabic’ from the northern Serbian town of Ruma, it has emerged.

"The investigation has come up with information that showed Dragan Dabic to have the same data on his identification card as the one found on Karadzic, including the serial number and issue date. Those two identification cards only had different photos," the head of Serbia’s Council for Cooperation with The Hague Tribunal Rasim Ljajic said.

The identification card was issued in Ruma on April 20 1999.

Meanwhile the brother of another man named Dragan Dabic, from Sarajevo, told BIRN’s Justice Report of his despair that top war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic had taken on another identity.

"He was 38 when he was killed. I cannot believe that Karadzic could use his identity," Mladen Dabic, Dragan’s only brother, told BIRN’s Justice Report.

Dragan Dabic was born in Tuzla in 1954 but was shot dead in a sniper attack in Sarajevo in 1993. His then young daughters and wife left the besieged city during the war and moved to Canada.

Bruno Vekaric, the spokesman for the Serbian Prosecution, says that the local authorities are trying to find out who helped Karadzic to obtain the false identity, adding that an investigation of potential helpers was ongoing. Vekaric told the Serbian media that "very few people" knew his real identity.

Mladen Dabic, resents the fact that Radovan Karadzic used the name of his late sibling, who was killed while he was queuing for humanitarian aid.

"When I heard the news that war criminal Radovan Karadzic 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 Karadzic," Mladen Dabic told Justice Report.

Dabic says that, over the past two days, his family has been under "an unbearable amount of stress", adding that they could not believe that some people do not let his brother "lie in peace" 15 years after his death.

Mladen claims that he still has not managed to get in touch with his sister-in-law Gordana and their daughters, who live in Canada. They all left Sarajevo in a convoy six months after Dragan's death.

"I am trying, not to think about what is now happening to my brother's name," Mladen says, adding that "there are so many pieces of information floating around," which, for sure, will "leave a huge scar."

"There is nothing I can do about it. What I can do is to talk to media and lift this burden myself a little bit at least," Dabic told Justice Report.

According to official data, 16 identifications cards have been issued in the name of Dragan Dabic in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the war. And now it seems that Karadzic had an identification card issued in Ruma, a northern Serbian town, which is under the jurisdiction of the Sremska Mitrovica police department.

"We have no information about the arrest of Radovan Karadzic and we have nothing to say about the forged identification card issued in Ruma," local police chief Zorav Smajic told the media.

In his statement given to Belgrade's Vecernji list daily, the spokesman of the Prosecution said Karadzic got his new identity from "certain structures," close to his Serbian Democratic Party in Bosnia which had connections with Serbian officials during the rule of Slobodan Milosevic.

"It is obvious that he started his parallel life a long time ago," Vladimir Vukicevic, the prosecutor said.

This article was compiled by BIRN’s Justice Report. Visit the Justice Report website here: http://www.bim.ba/en/125/10/