With U.N. officials predicting Karadzic would be handed to the war-crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the next week, an attorney said the prisoner would handle his own defense, just like his former mentor, the late Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006 while on trial.

Karadzic will do it looking like his old self, without the bushy white beard and long gray hair that hid his face when he was arrested by Serbian authorities, his lawyer, Sveta Vujacic, said. Karadzic asked for and got a shave and a haircut.

"He looks like new, exactly the same, only 14 years older," Vujacic said.

Since the arrest was announced Monday, Serbs have been intrigued by how Karadzic transformed himself from a flashy suit-and-tie politician into a long-haired health guru living openly in their midst while being sought for alleged crimes during Bosnia's 1992-95 ethnic bloodletting.

"His new life was fascinating," criminologist Leposava Kron said. "He hid in the open."

The metamorphosis was so complete that many of Karadzic's neighbors said they were struggling to comprehend how the friendly man they knew as "Dr. Dragan David Dabic" was one of the world's most-wanted fugitives.

Belgrade media said yesterday that the alias was taken from a Bosnian Serb who died in Bosnia's capital in 1993 during the war.

Karadzic had a girlfriend named Mila whom he presented as an associate in his alternative-medicine business, said Zoran Pavlovic, a software engineer who says he was hired in February to set up a Web site for "Dabic" to advertise his expertise in "human quantum energy."

Karadzic also claimed to have lived in New York and earned his diploma there, Pavlovic said. "He told me he traveled often to America, and I had no reason to disbelieve him."

Karadzic remains officially married to Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzic, who lives in their family house in the former Serb stronghold of Pale, in Bosnia, just east of Sarajevo.

Karadzic's neighbors praised him.

"He was always polite, offering his services to help my husband, who had a stroke," said Milica Sener, who lives one floor down. "But I declined. We don't believe in alternative medicine."

Shopkeeper Gordana Blagojevic said Karadzic bought yogurt and whole-grain bread at her store every other day, sometimes with his girlfriend in tow.

"I was shocked to hear who he really is," she said.

Misko Kovijanic, who owns the Madhouse bar in the neighborhood, said Karadzic was a regular who liked to sip red wine in the tavern, which is decorated with pictures of Karadzic and another Bosnian Serb fugitive, Gen. Ratko Mladic, during their wartime days.

The photographs, hanging above bottles of slivovitz plum brandy, show Mladic in combat fatigues and Karadzic, with his familiar salt-and-pepper mane, sporting a stylish suit.

Some Serbs believe Serbian authorities long knew his whereabouts and chose to protect him.

"I can't believe he was like a needle in the haystack," taxi driver Zoran Mirkovic said. "There simply was no political will to get him until now."