The real Dragan Dabic has emerged — and the 66-year construction worker was shocked to discover his identity had apparently been stolen by one of the world’s most notorious war crimes suspects.
Former Serbian president Radovan Karadzic assumed Dabic’s identity as a cover during the autocratic rule of his mentor, Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic, officials said on Thursday, promising to track down anyone who helped the Bosnian Serb warlord stay on the run from genocide charges for nearly 13 years.
The true Dabic lives in Ruma, a Serbian town just north of Belgrade, said Rasim Ljajic, a government official in charge of war crimes.
PHOTO: AP
“Dabic’s ID differs from Karadzic’s only in the photographs of the two,” Ljajic said.
That discovery certainly altered Dabic’s plans for the day.
“Instead of working in the garden, I’m being besieged by reporters and answering telephone calls,” Dabic said in Ruma, adding that he had no idea how the copy of his ID ended up in Karadzic’s hands.
“This is unfair. Instead of finding out who really cooked this up, I’m being questioned by police,” said Dabic, who bears no physical resemblance to Karadzic.
It also meant that all earlier reports on other Dragan Dabics — one official said there were seven dead or alive in Sarajevo alone — were tossed aside as false leads.
Officials were trying to figure out whether Karadzic’s ID was a fake or an official copy of Dabic’s original.
Bruno Vekaric, spokesman for Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor, said Karadzic obtained the false papers while Milosevic’s regime was still in power.
Those suspected of helping Karadzic evade justice will be prosecuted, Vekaric said, adding that authorities hoped they could also help track down the remaining war crimes fugitives, including Bosnian Serb wartime military commander General Ratko Mladic.
Several hundred ultranationalists — chanting Karadzic’s name and denouncing Serbia’s new pro-Western government — marched in downtown Belgrade on Thursday in support of Karadzic.
Karadzic sent word he plans to defend himself against UN genocide charges. But his fellow Serbs were more enthralled with details of his secret life: a mistress, a bogus family in the US and regular visits to The Madhouse bar.
Meanwhile, an Austrian daily reported yesterday that Karadzic worked in Vienna as “miracle healer” during his years under cover.
The Kurier quotes a married couple as saying that Karadzic called himself “Pera” and saw patients in homes of Serbians living in the Austrian capital.
The couple, whose names were altered by the paper to protect their identity, say they sought his services after trying in vain to have children. Kurier quotes them as saying their encounter with him occurred in mid-2006 and that they last heard from him more than a year ago.
WAKE-UP CALL: Firms in the private sector were not taking basic precautions, despite the cyberthreats from China and Russia, a US cybersecurity official said A ninth US telecom firm has been confirmed to have been hacked as part of a sprawling Chinese espionage campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and telephone conversations of an unknown number of Americans, a top White House official said on Friday. Officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden this month said that at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by the Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon. US Deputy National Security Adviser for Cyber and Emerging Technologies Anne Neuberger on Friday told reporters that a ninth victim
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged prisoners of war in the latest such swap that saw the release of hundreds of captives and was brokered with the help of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), officials said on Monday. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that 189 Ukrainian prisoners, including military personnel, border guards and national guards — along with two civilians — were freed. He thanked the UAE for helping negotiate the exchange. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that 150 Russian troops were freed from captivity as part of the exchange in which each side released 150 people. The reason for the discrepancy in numbers
A shark attack off Egypt’s Red Sea coast killed a tourist and injured another, authorities said on Sunday, with an Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs source identifying both as Italian nationals. “Two foreigners were attacked by a shark in the northern Marsa Alam area, which led to the injury of one and the death of the other,” the Egyptian Ministry of Environment said in a statement. A source at the Italian foreign ministry said that the man killed was a 48-year-old resident of Rome. The injured man was 69 years old. They were both taken to hospital in Port Ghalib, about 50km north
MISSING: Prosecutors urged the company to move workers out of poor living conditions to hotels, but residents said many workers had already left the town Brazil has stopped issuing temporary work visas for BYD, the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday, in the wake of accusations that some workers at a site owned by the Chinese electric vehicle producer had been victims of human trafficking. The announcement came days after labor authorities said they found 163 Chinese workers who had been brought to Brazil irregularly in “slavery-like” conditions at the BYD factory construction site in the northeastern state of Bahia. The workers were employed by contractor Jinjiang Group, which has denied any wrongdoing. Later, the authorities also said the workers were victims of human trafficking,
RSS