The quest for Radovan Karadzic - Nick Hawton

For more than a decade Europe's most wanted man, Radovan Karadzic, evaded the combined efforts of western intelligence agencies, NATO peacekeepers and Hague investigators and maverick bounty hunters to track him down.

He travelled around with apparent impunity, even making public appearances on TV in his new personae as a guru of alternative medicine.

When everybody else seemed to have given the hunt, one journalist doggedly followed his trail, travelling from the snow-capped mountains of Montenegro to the killing the fields of eastern Bosnia to the corridors of power in Belgrade, in search of the man accused of some of the most horrific crimes committed in Europe since the Second World War.

On his journey into the dark heart of Balkan politics and crime, he met secret intelligence agents who tried to recruit him, got to know the Karadzic family in their home in Bosnia and interviewed the Serbian politicians who held the levers of power. And he met the widows who had lost everything in the maelstrom of the Bosnian war that Radovan Karadzic had helped to spark.

He uncovered a tale of intrigue, murder, betrayal, spies, dirty deals, international politics and innocent victims. It was a quest that brought him face to face with the personal tragedy of others and the black humour that so often accompanied it. Ultimately, it was to make him question the whole nature of his profession.

This is a rare journey through the looking glass, into the murky world of international politics and espionage, concerning one of the darker episodes of recent history.