-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Radovan Karadzic , whose Interpol charges listed `` flamboyant behavior '' as a distinguishing characteristic , was a practicing psychiatrist who came to be nicknamed the '' Butcher of Bosnia . '' Twice indicted in 1995 by the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia , Karadzic faces charges of genocide , complicity in genocide , extermination , murder , willful killing , persecutions , deportation , inhumane acts , terror against civilians and hostage-taking . While president of the so-called Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina , Karadzic 's troops were reported to have massacred over hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Croats during a campaign of `` ethnic cleansing . '' Early estimates of the death toll from the 3-year war ranged up to 300,000 , but recent research reduced that to about 100,000 . The U.S. State Department had a $ 5 million reward for information leading to his capture . His arrest brings an end to more than 10 years as a fugitive . Watch CNN 's Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour report on Karadzic 's rise and fall '' Karadzic was born on June 19 , 1945 , in Petnjica , Montenegro . He studied psychiatry and medicine at the University of Sarajevo during the 1960s and took courses in psychiatry and poetry at Columbia University from 1974 to 1975 . Karadzic , a Serb-Croat , in 1990 helped found the Serbian Democratic Party -LRB- SDS -RRB- , a party aimed at unifying Serbs into a common state , and became its president . Two years later , he became president of the newly declared Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina , later called `` Republika Srpska . '' During the next three years , he ordered Bosnian Serb forces to seize the majority of Bosnia and Herzegovina . He also announced , according to his U.N. indictment , six `` strategic objectives '' for the Serbian people . They included the establishment of state borders between the Serbs and the other two ethnic communities , Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats . Answering to him , according to the indictment , was Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic . From May 1992 , the indictment alleged , Bosnian Serb forces under Mladic 's command targeted civilian areas of Sarajevo with shelling and sniping during a three-year conflict within the city . In July 1995 , according to the U.N. indictment , troops under Mladic 's command executed an estimated 7,000 Bosnian Muslim male prisoners in Srebrenica , a U.N. safe area , and then participated in a comprehensive effort to conceal the killings . The massacre is considered the worst in Europe since World War II . The indictment states that Bosnian Serb forces acted under Karadzic 's direction and worked to `` significantly reduce the Bosnian Muslim , Bosnian Croat and other non-Serb populations '' in municipalities that were seized . Karadzic was last seen in public in September 1996 , a year after the Dayton Peace Accords brought a formal end to the conflict and banned anyone accused of war crimes , including him , from office . He reportedly shaved his trademark bushy hair , grew a beard and donned priest 's robes , moving from monastery to monastery in the mountains to avoid capture . CNN Correspondent Alessio Vinci said : `` He enjoyed protection from the local population , wherever he was hiding . Legend has it he disguised himself as a priest to take part in his mother 's funeral . `` In 2002 , after NATO launched one of its many failed raids to try to arrest Karadzic in Bosnia , I interviewed his mother . At that time she said : ` Serbs are righteous people and I can see that they support him , and that they adore him the way he is . They would lose their lives to protect him . ' '' Despite years on the run , Karadzic wrote `` Miraculous Chronicles of the Night '' -- 1,200 copies of which sold out at the 2004 Belgrade International Book Fair . After his arrest was announced , Serb officials revealed the final chapter of his life on the run had seen Karadic reprise his medical role , working in a clinic in Belgrade under a false identity and heavily disguised by a white beard , long hair and spectacles . `` He moved freely throughout the city , and the fact that he even held a job at a medical practice and nobody knew about this contributes to the fact that his false identity was very elaborate , '' said Serbian war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic .