The office of Serb president Boris Tadic said that Karadžić was arrested late on Monday night in Belgrade by the Serbian security services. He had been posing as a doctor of alternative medicine, sporting long hair, a beard and glasses to hide his face.

“Karadžić used false documents with the name Dragan Dabic,” said Rasim Ljajic, the minister in charge of cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Karadžić will now face charges for crimes committed during the 1992-1995 Balkan war, including:

• Eleven counts of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and other atrocities
• Charged over the killing of some 12,000 civilians during the siege of Sarajevo
• Allegedly organised the massacre of at least 7,500 Muslim men and youths in Srebrenica
• Targeted Bosnian Muslim and Croat political leaders, intellectuals and professionals
• Unlawfully deported and transferred civilians because of national or religious identity
• Destroyed homes, businesses and sacred sites

Vladimir Vukcevic, Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor said Karadžić would be transferred to the United Nations tribunal in The Hague once legal obstacles were cleared.

The Serbian authorities are not revealing too many details of the Monday evening operation so as not to jeopardise efforts to arrest two other war crime suspects on the run, including Mr Karadžić’s wartime military leader, Ratko Mladic.