Wife of convicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic dies at 80

Zelen-Karadzic was a neuropsychiatrist by profession and served as president of the Red Cross of Republika Srpska from 1993 to 2002, during and after the Bosnian war.

She was born in Sarajevo in 1945, where she also graduated from the Faculty of Medicine.

The United States had previously placed Zelen-Karadzic on its sanctions list maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), citing her conduct and public statements, including allegations that she had spread false information regarding her role during the period when Karadzic was evading arrest.

Her husband, Radovan Karadzic, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019 after being convicted by a United Nations war crimes tribunal of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes committed during the 1992–1995 Bosnian war. His convictions include genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed.

Karadzic, the former political leader of Bosnian Serbs, was arrested in Belgrade in 2008 after more than a decade in hiding and was later transferred to The Hague to stand trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), whose rulings were upheld on appeal.