Belgrade, Serbia ? Radovan Karadzic sent word he plans to defend himself against U.N. genocide charges, but his fellow Serbs were more enthralled with details that emerged Wednesday about his secret life: a mistress, a bogus family in the U.S., and regular visits to the Madhouse bar and its photo of his beardless days as wartime leader of Bosnian Serbs.

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.

Secret life

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. He hid in the open,” said criminologist Leposava Kron.

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 Wednesday 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 the “Dabic” to advertise his expertise in “human quantum energy.”

Pavlovic told The Associated Press he visited Karadzic’s apartment in a grim suburb of the capital called New Belgrade once or twice a month to discuss the project.

The rented two-room flat was a mess, with things strewn about. Karadzic was always dressed in black and often complained that money was hard to come by, Pavlovic said.

“Frankly, he scared me a bit. I thought he belonged to some religious sect or something, with that beard and all, but I treated him as any other client,” Pavlovic said.

On one table was a framed photograph of four boys, all dressed in yellow Los Angeles Lakers T-shirts, Pavlovic said. He said Karadzic identified them as grandsons living in America.

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.

Nice neighbor

Karadzic’s neighbors had only praise for 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.”

Pensioner Milica Bjelanovic said Karadzic moved to the neighborhood about 18 months ago. She described him as a quiet man who was a bit of an oddity looking like a kind of bushy beatnik Santa Claus with long hair worn in a plaited topknot.

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.

“I’m very proud that he came to my pub, and I’m very sad that he was arrested,” Kovijanic said.