Copyright CanWest Interactive, Inc. Jul 23, 2008

After a manhunt that had lasted more than a decade, Radovan Karadzic was finally tracked to a Belgrade neighbourhood with a name derived from the Serb word meaning "medicine man."

With his flowing white beard and long thick hair tied into a bun on top of his head, the man sought for whipping up Bosnian Serbs into acts of genocide, the man at the heart of a conflict that left 100,000 dead, had metamorphosed into a "spiritual healer."

Old reputations die hard, though, and the authorities' immediate concern on Monday night was getting their man safely into custody.

For years Mr. Karadzic and his fellow fugitive, Ratko Mladic, were thought to have been on the run, surrounded by bodyguards, always moving in heavily armed groups prepared to fight.

But as months stretched into years, and then to more than a decade, the bands of loyalists had evidently dwindled. In the end, he was taken without a shot being fired.

"He did not surrender; that is not his style," his brother, Luka Karadzic, said yesterday, speaking outside the courthouse where Mr. Karadzic is being held until his extradition to The Hague war crimes tribunal is finalised--possibly as soon as tomorrow.

According to Serbia's war crimes prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic, however, the snatch squads chose their time and place to "take care that everyone was safe, to protect every-one's security including that of Karadzic."

It seems they decided that the best time to do that was as he travelled by bus through Vracar, a hilltop district regarded as one of the city's most prestigious, and home to its largest Orthodox church.

Mr. Karadzic had long been rumoured to have found shelter among the Serb Orthodox church, perhaps in remote mountain monasteries as far away as Greece.

Instead, his cover was the most densely populated part of the Serbian capital, and his chosen profession was not churchman, but healer.

And though snipers and special forces soldiers were no doubt monitoring the scene, his lawyer, Sveta Vujacic, said that ultimately Mr. Karadzic was simply approached by police and taken away.

"He just said that these people showed him a police badge and then he was taken to some place and kept in a room," Mr. Vujacic said. "He did not have any security and he lived by himself."

It marked a straightforward end to a manhunt that had been anything but. Mr. Karadzic's whereabouts had been sought by intelligence agencies across Europe. MI6 was heavily involved as periodic NATO-led raids were unleashed across the region. The most recent came this spring, when soldiers stormed Mr. Karadzic's family home in Pale, south-east of Sarajevo. Then, the troops even searched the sewage tank.

Four years earlier, the SAS led a dramatic raid on a church complex in the same city.

That time, Mr. Karadzic eluded capture, but, it seemed, only just. Rumours swirled afterward that he had been tipped off and escaped with moments to spare.

Blame for scuppering the hunt was often laid at the door of recalcitrant Serb officials, many of whom still regarded Mr. Karadzic as a hero.

Florence Hartmann, of the war-crimes prosecutors' office, suggested that Mr. Karadzic had also benefited from Western political protection, and was once spirited to Belarus to escape the investigators' clutches in a deal she claimed was sanctioned by the United States.

There was to be no such help this week. Instead, with a co-operative new government in Belgrade, Western intelligence agencies were thought to have tipped off the Serbian authorities about where to look for Mr. Karadzic.

But even they can have been little prepared for what they saw when they found him several weeks ago.

Mr. Karadzic, a trained psychiatrist who once worked with Sarajevo's football team, had assumed a new identity as Dr. Dragan Dabic, "spiritual explorer."

Under this title he was working in a Belgrade clinic, paying his rent and writing about the art of meditation for the magazine Healthy Life.

"He looked strange," said the magazine's editor, Goran Kojic. "He had long grey hair gathered in a ponytail and strangely braided at the top."

But that did not stop the journalists warming to their new recruit.

"We knew him very well," said one colleague. "He participated in round-table discussions, he was part of what we did. We are simply in a state of shock."

But it was as a "psychoenergy therapist" that Mr. Karadzic had really spread his wings.

Working at an alternative medical practice outside Belgrade, he passed himself off as an expert in "psychology and bioenergy."

His business card advertised his expertise in "human quantum energy," and his Web site offered treatment for conditions such as diabetes.

He even gave lectures, flaunting his new identity in the heart of the city once ruled by Slobodan Milosevic.

But that freedom was to prove fleeting. For the 63-year-old seems certain to face humanity's most serious legal charges at The Hague tribunal.

Credit: Alex Todorovic And Harry De Quetteville; The Daily Telegraph