●Radovan Karadzic was born on June 19 1945 in a Montenegro hamlet and raised in poverty. His father was a Serb nationalist fighter wounded at the end of the second world war by partisans of the Yugoslavian ruler Josip Broz Tito.

●He became a psychiatrist, specialising in neurosis and depression, and an amateur poet. His soft, smiling face and shaggy mane of grey hair gave him a deceptive credibility at first as Bosnian Serb leader.