BELGRADE, July 28: Serbian newspapers published pictures on Monday of a local healer who is the spitting image of the character war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic assumed to avoid capture until a week ago.

“I have no connection with Karadzic and have only seen him on television,” the man, Petar Glumac, was quoted as saying in the daily Alo!.

A report under the bold front-page headline, “Radovan stole my image and energy,” was accompanied by several photographs of Glumac alongside those of the disguised Karadzic.

“I have also been on television, but you will have to ask him personally as to the reason he copied (my appearance),” said Glumac, a resident of the northeastern Serbian village of Novo Selo.

Wartime Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic, 63, was captured in Belgrade on July 21, after more than a decade on the run from the UN war crimes tribunal, under the false name of Dragan Dabic and disguised as an alternative medicine guru.

His alter ego bears an uncanny resemblance to Glumac, who was pictured wearing thick glasses and a long white beard like Karadzic. Only their eyebrows differed — Karadzic’s black and Glumac’s white.

“Karadzic “stole the style of Uncle Pera,” an unidentified neighbour of Glumac was quoted as saying in the newspaper report, using his nickname.

Glumac, a 78-year-old, said that Austrian police had detained him in Vienna last year, according to the report.

That could explain weekend reports in which Vienna newspapers cited Austrian detectives as saying they thought they had questioned Karadzic in May 2007, when he went by the name “Pera” and travelled on a Croatian passport, after seeing the pictures released by Belgrade.

At the time, Glumac, a healer who treated Austrian Serb patients, would have had a similar appearance to Karadzic in his disguise as Dabic.

After Karadzic’s new look was revealed following his arrest, Serb patients in Vienna had told Austrian media that he had treated them during his years on the run, using the assumed identity of “Pera.”

Serbia hopes to transfer Karadzic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague later this week. He stands indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.—AFP