Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, sentenced to life in prison, will serve his sentence in a UK prison. Karadzic remains in detention in Scheveningen. It will be transferred as soon as possible.

He was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. He was initially sentenced to 40 years in prison. The UN court in The Hague that heard the appeal ruled in 2019 that that sentence was too low and disproportionate to the gravity of the crimes committed under the Karadzic government. He received a life sentence.

In the ruling announcing the move to the UK, the court writes that the British government is prepared to monitor Karadzic’s sentencing. “Radovan Karadzic is one of the few guilty of genocide,” British Foreign Secretary Raab said in a statement.

Beard

Karadzic was the political leader of the Bosnian Serbs during the Bosnian War in the 1990s and commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces. In that role, he was responsible for the Srebrenica genocide in July 1995, in which more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by General Ratko Mladic and his troops.

Karadzic also played a crucial role in the siege of Sarajevo, which lasted for more than 3.5 years. 12,000 people died in the siege.

After the war, Karadzic managed to stay out of the hands of the ICTY for years. He was arrested in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, in 2008. He had grown a beard and was pretending to be the alternative healer Dragan Dabic.