Which belongs not to him, but to this person:
Or that is at least one of the versions. In another version he assumed the identity of a much younger person who was killed during the siege of Sarajevo.
What is fairly certain is that he did not get the false identity on his own. The answer to the question of how he got it probably depends on when he got it. If it was early on, it could have been as early as 1993 when the younger Dragan Dabić was killed. Then chances are that the documents were provided by Karadžić's fellow criminals in Bosnia. If it was later, and the most frequent guess now seems to be that was in Belgrade from 2005 onward, it would have to have been done by criminals in Serbia. What kind of criminals in Serbia? Follow the paper trail: who issues the documents?
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Regarding Dragan Dabic (1954-1993) killed in Sarajevo, here's an interview with his brother Mladen:
http://www.bim.ba/bh/125/10/12046/
As for the other Dragan Dabic (?-2008) arrested in Belgrade, Aleksandar Hemon writes it's time to demythologize the war criminal:
http://www.bim.ba/bh/125/10/11960/
Then there is this detail from the first article:
"Prema zvaničnim podacima, u Bosni i Hercegovini je od kraja rata naovamo izdato 16 ličnih karata na ime i prezime Dragan Dabić."
But perhaps it is likelier that he assumed the identity of a person his own age?
Just to add -- that second link, the Hemon article, is quite good.
Re: Dragan Dabic, not only are there tens such names in BH, but also in Serbia, Croatia, etc (plus the combinations with D. David Dabic, and so on). I guess we'll have to wait to see if an exact "source" and trail of documents will be established (though it's unlikely that it involves the person killed in Sarajevo due to the age difference you pointed out). Still, it's terrible that Karadzic's forces killed a man whose name he later took up as his own (knowingly or unknowingly).
Hemon is, as usual, great. I hope there'll be another article in Dani this week.
I should add that the above notes re: Dabic in Sarajevo are taken from the linked but quite short interview with his brother Mladen. Nothing yet on other possible matches or docs. Perhaps more details will emerge soon?
A quick follow-up on the Hemon posts.
1) An English translation of the earlier article:
http://www.rferl.org/content/Time_To_Test_Karadzic_Myth/1185400.html
2) Plus a revised version from BH Dani, with a new conclusion about Karadzic and Republika srpska:
http://www.bhdani.com/default.asp?kat=kol&broj_id=580&tekst_rb=19
"Still, it's terrible that Karadzic's forces killed a man whose name he later took up as his own (knowingly or unknowingly)."
Seems you are ignorant of the Muslim snipers in Sarajevo and that they were targeting the Serb controlled areas where he was killed.
The Bosnian Muslim army and paramilitary were involved in the killings of ethnic Serbs in Sarajevo throughout the war.
Civilian Serbs were decapitated and thrown off the Kazani gorge in the Sarajevo area. As well there was the Bradina massacre and Serbs list scores of illegal prisons and concentration camps on the Muslim controlled territory within Sarajevo.
The front lines ran through the middle of Sarajevo and the Serb section was just as damaged as the Muslim section, with most damage along the front lines where the two armies faced off. The Muslim army having the most manpower/infantry fighting within Bosnia.
The Bosnian government's massive war (and post-war) crimes are plain as day. Re: Sarajevan Dragan Dabic (d.1993), however, see first link in first comment. This is what Birn reported:
"When I heard the news that war criminal Radovan Karadzic is using my brother's name, I could not believe it. It was horrible. This was an act of dishonor to a person, who was killed by the army commanded by Karadzic," Mladen Dabic told Justice Report.
http://www.bim.ba/en/125/10/12046/
This, of course, shouldn't detract from the questions in the post, how Karadzic got to be another "Dragan Dabic" in Belgrade.
This was an act of dishonor to a person, who was killed by the army commanded by Karadzic," Mladen Dabic
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Unless he witnessed it (the actual shooter) or could trace quite precisely where the bullets came from (and knew it was 100% controlled by Serb forces), I don't think he could genuinely know for certain. The snipers of both sides were quite mobile and hid in numerous buildings.
Many a sniper attack blamed on "the Serbs" was believed by some UN officials and others on the ground to be just as likely to have been done by the Bosnian Muslim army.
Remember the killing of the young mixed couple the so-called "Romeo and Juliet of Sarajevo"? That was blamed on Serbs, even though there were several forces all around the bridge area where they were shot. (They were actually leaving Sarajevo for Belgrade as the Serb man's life was being more and more threatened living in the Muslim dominated part of Sarajevo.)
Years later in a Croatian paper the killer was identified precisely as Dragan Bozic, a Croat who fought with the Bosnian Muslim side.
There was an assassination group under Izetbegovic's command called Sevas or Seve and one of their operators (same as the one who identified Dragan Bozic as the killer of the mixed couple) said that the Bosnian Muslim snipers practiced shooting old Serbian women in Grbavica:
http://www.ex-yupress.com/slodal/slodal25.html
"Herenda. How did you practice that?" I asked him and he replied that they would climb hilltops or building tops and then shoot at Serbs in Grbavica. "How did you pick your targets?" We would shoot at anyone, said Herenda. For example, they would pick out a woman, an elderly woman and then they would shoot at her. One of them would follow her movement and the other one shoot. When I asked him how he could be certain that the woman was not for example a Bosniak woman who by chance stayed in Grbavica, he replied that they watched for that. For example they made sure that their targets were wearing black [custom among elderly Christian women in rural areas of Bosnia and elsewhere in the Balkans]. That indicates Herenda's truly criminal character.
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And in any event I don't think Karadzic will get a fair trial in the least, nor will he be able to tell much of what he knows in regards to things which would damage the anti-Serb propaganda. I think he will be poisoned or suicided before the defense part of his trial gets going, and he will be delivered back a corpse a la Milosevic.
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