physician, author, and politician who was leader (1990–96) of the Serbian Democratic Party in Bosnia and president (1992–95) of the autonomous Republika Srpska, a self-proclaimed Serb republic within Bosnia. In 1995 he was indicted for committing war crimes during the civil war that followed Bosnia and Herzegovina's split from Yugoslavia in 1992.

Karadžić's father was a member of the Chetniks (Chetnik), the Serbs who during World War II fought both the Nazis (along with their Croatian collaborators) and the Partisans, the communist guerrillas led by Josip Broz Tito (Tito, Josip Broz). Karadžić studied medicine in Sarajevo and became a physician and a psychiatrist; he also published poetry and books for children. In 1985 Karadžić was imprisoned for 11 months for fraud involving the use of state funds. In 1990 he helped found the Serbian Democratic Party, a group dedicated to thwarting Croatian parties in Bosnia, and served as its first leader.

In 1992 Karadžić became president of a self-declared autonomous Bosnian Serb republic that allied itself with the rump of the Yugoslav federation (then consisting only of Serbia and Montenegro). With the support of Serbian Pres. Slobodan Miloševic (Milošević, Slobodan) and the Bosnian Serb military leader Gen. Ratko Mladic, Karadžić began a campaign to take control of parts of Bosnia and to purge the areas of non-Serb peoples. Throughout the period from 1992 to 1995, he alternately pursued ruthless military actions and expressed interest in peace efforts advanced by Western leaders. On July 25 and again on Nov. 16, 1995, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), held in The Hague, indicted him for crimes that included genocide, murder, rape, and other mistreatment of civilians. As the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Karadžić was held responsible for the “ ethnic cleansing” of Serb-held areas of Bosnia, during which tens of thousands of Bosniacs (Muslims) and Croats were killed or driven from their homes in what has been called the most atrocious instance of genocide committed in Europe since the close of World War II. The most heinous act attributed to Karadžić was the ordering of the murder of more than 7,000 Bosniacs in the town of Srebrenica in July 1995.

At the end of 1995, after Miloševic had closed Yugoslavia's borders with Bosnia and apparently withdrawn support from the Bosnian Serbs, Karadžić was pressured into signing the Dayton Accords. This peace agreement provided for a division of Bosnia and Herzegovina into two autonomous sections—a Croat-Bosniac entity (the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina) and a Bosnian Serb republic (the Republika Srpska)—but with a unified presidency. The accords specified that no one indicted for war crimes could participate in the elections scheduled for Sept. 14, 1996; thus, Karadžić was required to relinquish his government and party positions. Troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), charged with enforcing the accords, had the authority to arrest Karadžić but took no action against him.

Karadžić went into hiding in 1997, with reports over the ensuing years placing him in, among other places, Serbia, eastern Bosnia, Russia, and Montenegro. Despite his status as an internationally maligned war criminal, he managed to publish a novel, Cudesna hronika noći (“Miraculous Chronicles of the Night”; 2004), and still enjoyed the support of some Serb nationalists. On July 21, 2008, nearly 13 years after being indicted by the ICTY, he was arrested near Belgrade, Serb., by Serbian authorities; shortly thereafter he was transferred to The Hague to await trial. It was speculated that Serbia's desire to gain entrance into the European Union played a role in its redoubled efforts to capture the fugitive. At the time of the arrest, it was revealed that Karadžić had disguised himself and used an alias, Dragan Dabić, in order to practice alternative medicine openly in Belgrade.