Woman denies being Karadzic's mistress

The woman described by Serbian tabloids as the mistress of Radovan Karadzic denied the claims, saying her world collapsed when she discovered the man she befriended and respected was the war crimes fugitive.

“It was a terrifying shock,” said Mila Cicak. “I’m the one in prison now, except there are no bars on my cell.”

The 53-year-old single mother recounted what she called the “personal hell” she has been going through since Serbian authorities announced they captured Karadzic on Monday and made public his cover as a self-styled healer named Dr Dragan Dabic.

Soon after the capture, a photo of the white-haired and bearded Dabic in the company of Ms Cicak surfaced on front pages in local Serbian newspapers and tabloids – and prompted a frenzied media hunt for the woman dubbed his mistress.

Since then, Ms Cicak has been hounded by cameras, her apartment in the suburb of Zemun under constant media siege.

Until yesterday, she could not think, sleep, eat or leave her home except to briefly walk her dog in the garden, she said. But then, exhaustion finally gave way to anger, and she says she now plans to sue the media for libel.

“Some have even alleged that I hid Karadzic in my apartment, that I’m an accomplice to a war criminal,” said chain-smoking Ms Cicak.

“I am a sacrificial lamb, marked probably for the rest of my life. But I’m an innocent victim, being used to discredit this man, sever his links with his family.”

Ms Cicak stressed she was a “serious person” who could never put her 26-year-old son in harm’s way through a voluntary association with a war crimes suspect.

The wartime Bosnian Serb leader, who had been in hiding for almost 12 years, is accused of genocide – masterminding the deadly siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica.

Karadzic was a psychiatrist before Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, during which he turned to politics.

After the conflict, and in a transformation worthy of a thriller, Karadzic changed his appearance from the besuited politician who led Bosnia’s Serbs into ethnic bloodletting, to a health guru who lived in Belgrade and whose black clothes, bushy beard and long hair worn in a plaited topknot made for a striking appearance.

The two met at a public lecture on alternative medicine seven months ago, said Ms Cicak, who was employed at a Belgrade health institute until she resigned some years ago to devote her time to her fascination with alternative medicine.

She said she “instantly became interested” in Dabic, and the two became friends.

When he introduced her to the “quantum energy” procedure he was practising, she began working with him. As time went by, their friendship deepened and they became close work associates, she said.

“But we were never lovers, there was no romantic involvement between us,” Cicak stressed, adding that she felt “utmost respect” for a man “so deeply humanitarian” there was no way to fake this.

“Dabic is an authentic person, I never doubted his identity or professionalism,” she added.

Ms Cicak got involved in the case of a four-year-old autistic child whom Dabic worked with, and said she witnessed the boy’s improvement.

“I can’t reconcile the two personalities, the one of Karadzic and the other of the man I knew,” she said. “For me there is only one person, only Dr Dabic. I believed in him completely.”

Meanwhile a leading Serbian newspaper reported that Karadzic’s lawyer had sent a last-minute appeal against his extradition to the United Nations war crimes court at The Hague in the Netherlands.

The Karadzic defence team had until midnight on Friday to lodge a formal appeal. Proof of postage is sufficient even if the appeal has not yet arrived.

Lawyer Svetozar Vujacic was quoted by yesterday’s Politika daily as saying the appeal was sent from a post office, declining to say which one, so the letter could not be immediately identified and rushed to the court handling Karadzic’s extradition.

Once Serb judges decide on the appeal, the case will be handed over to the Serbian government, which issues the final extradition order.