Karadzic was under the protection of loyal Bosnian Serbs for 13 years [AFP]

The arrest after a decade-long hunt is the equivalent of capturing the "Osama bin Laden of Europe" according to Richard Holbrooke, the US diplomat who brokered the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement in Bosnia.

A fugitive from 1995 until 2008, he managed to become a published author, visit his wife on a regular basis and work at a private clinic in Belgrade specialising in alternative medicine and psychology under the alias Dr. Dragan David Dabic, during his years on the run.

During his years on the run after being ousted as leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Karadzic was protected by a guard of 80 armed loyalists who were ruthless in their determination to keep him safe and thwart any attempts by Nato troops to arrest him.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yogoslavia (ICTY) issued an outstanding arrest warrant against Karadzic for numerous war crimes committed against non-Serbs, including genocide, during the Bosnian War (1992-1995) as Supreme Commander of the Bosnian Serb armed forces and President of the National Security Council of the Republika Srpska.

He was indicted twice by the UN war crimes tribunal, but evaded arrest often reportedly by using elaborate disguises.

As the leader of the SDS and president of a breakaway Serb republic and supreme commander of its army, Karadzic was in a superior position to the Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic, a fellow indictee, and every member of the wartime Bosnian Serb Government.

It was for that reason that he became the UN's most wanted man, jointly indicted by the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in 1995, along with General Ratko Mladic.

Karadzic was born in 1945 in Savnik, Montenegro.

His father, Vuko, had been a member of the Chetniks - Serb nationalist fighters during World War II - and was in prison for much of his son's childhood.

In 1960 he moved to Sarajevo to pursue his studies in psychiatry, where he later met his wife, Ljiljana, graduated as a doctor, and worked at a hospital in Belgrade.

He also became a poet and fell under the influence of Dobrica Cosic, Serbian nationalist writer, who encouraged him to pursue a career in politics.

After working briefly for the Green Party, Karadzic played an important role in setting up the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), created in 1990 in an attempt to halt the rise of the Croat nationalist parties in Bosnia and dedicated to the goal of a Greater Serbia.

Almost two years later, as Bosnia-Hercegovina was recognised as an independent state, he declared himself as the first president of the new Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina, with Sarajevo as its capital, after Bosnia's first democratic elections in 1990.

The move triggered one of the bloodiest wars in modern Europe post World War II.

In July 1996 he stepped down as president of the SDS as the West threatened sanctions against the Republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina, renamed the Republika Srpska.

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