Karadzic has been on the run from international justice since he was indicted in July 1995 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) together with his military commander Ratko Mladic, who is also still at large.

The indictment against Karadzic details his role in the war in Bosnia, the bloodiest Balkan war in the 1990s which left over 200,000 people dead. In particular it highlights the Bosnian Serb leader's alleged responsibility for the siege of Sarajevo, the campaign of ethnic cleansing throughout Bosnia and holding dozens of UN peacekeepers hostage.

The two counts of genocide, the gravest of war crimes, specifically mention the establishment of camps and detention centres for Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslims.

Tens of thousands of people were held in horrific living conditions in the camps run by Bosnian Serbs at the start of the 1992-95 war. Thousands did not survive.

Conditions in the camps were "calculated to bring about physical destruction", detainees were subjected to "physical and mental abuse" and were fed "starvation rations", the prosecution has said.

In July 1995 Serb troops overran the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia and killed more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in the deadliest single bloodbath in Europe since World War II.

Karadzic "initiated and implemented a course of conduct which included the creation of impossible conditions of life, involving persecutions and terror tactics that would have the effect of encouraging non-Serbs to leave those areas; the deportation of those reluctant to leave; and the liquidation of others," the indictment reads.

Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic who led one of the army units involved in the massacres in 2001 became the first person to be convicted of genocide by the tribunal for the killings in the Muslim enclave.

The Krstic case is currently being considered by the appeals chamber but a date for a final ruling is not yet known.

In all Karadzic faces 11 charges also including extermination, murder, persecutions, deportation, unlawfully inflicting terror upon civilians and the taking of hostages.

Karadzic "individually and in concert with others planned, ordered, instigated or otherwise aided and abetted" these atrocities and "failed to take necessary and reasonable measures to prevent such acts or to punish the perpetrators," the prosecution charges.

For 44 months. Bosnian Serb forces under Karadzic's control "used shelling and sniping to kill, maim, wound and terrorise the civilian inhabitants of Sarajevo".

The indictment cites a number of targets: "civilians queuing for bread, playing football or simply walking with their children or friends".

"In addition to the sheer human carnage that the shelling and sniping caused, the endless threat of death and maiming caused extensive trauma and psychological damage to the inhabitants of Sarajevo," according to the indictment.

Two former political allies of Karadzic, Biljana Plavsic and Momcilo Krajisnik, have both been brought before the UN court.

Plavsic, the former Bosnian Serb president known as the "Iron Lady," is serving an 11-year sentence in Sweden for war crimes after pleading guilty to persecution.

She is the highest ranking official of the former Yugoslavia to have acknowledged responsibility for the atrocities committed in the Balkan wars.

Krajisnik was arrested in 2000 and went on trial in The Hague in February this year on charges of genocide and other war crimes, entering a plea of not guilty.

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