Ljiljana Zelen Karadžić, wife of war criminal Radovan Karadžić, died today at the age of 81 in East Sarajevo.
The news of the death was announced by Srna news agency. Zelen Karadžić was a neuropsychiatrist by profession, and from 1993 to 2002 she served as the president of the Red Cross of the Republika Srpska.
Ljiljana Zelen Karadžić was born in 1945 in Sarajevo, where she graduated from the Faculty of Medicine.
Ljiljana Karadžić was on the list of sanctioned persons of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) due to her continuous behavior and statements in the previous period, including presenting false information about her role in Karadžić’s evasion of arrest.
She previously submitted a request to be removed from OFAC’s list of sanctioned persons. The court in the USA rejected the request with the conclusion that Ljiljana Karadzic “helped Radovan Karadzic financially and in other ways”.
In particular, OFAC pointed out, in its original explanation, which the court fully accepted, that Ljiljana Karadžić was present at two events, in 2016 and 2018, where “her husband’s actions were celebrated or commemorated”, but the court’s decision states that these were not the only reasons why she remained on the list of sanctioned persons.
In this context, OFAC noted, and the court supported, that Ljiljana Karadžić publicly supported her husband and denied the facts about the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that she publicly urged him never to surrender to the competent institutions.
In addition, it is stated that she referred to the International Tribunal for the Crimes of the former Yugoslavia as “illegal” and a “malignant cancer”, and that she “actively worked against its finding and arrest.”
Her husband, Radovan Karadzic, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019 after the ICTY found him guilty of war crimes, including the genocide in Srebrenica.
