Among international leaders in the 1990s, the Serbian nationalist Radovan Karadzic ranked as one of the most notorious. A psychiatrist-turned-politician, Karadzic inflamed Serb passions during the conflicts over independence which rocked the former Yugoslavian republics at the start of the decade. As president of the Serbian Democratic Party, he plunged Bosnia and Herzegovina into war. Countless atrocities committed under his command helped advance a policy known as "ethnic cleansing"--the violent removal of enemy ethnic groups from entire regions by any means, including theft, destruction of homes, rape, torture, and murder. Indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Karadzic flouted its authority and remained at large.

Born on June 19, 1945, in the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, Karadzic grew up in a mountain village with a family legacy of political strife. His father was a revolutionary who had belonged to the Chetniks. Formed during...