Sarajevo - Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader indicted for war crimes, may lose his property in order to compensate the victims of his alleged crimes, Bosnian media reported Friday quoting a US official in Bosnia.

Sarajevo daily Dnevni avaz reported that Karadzic owes some 4.5 billion US dollars to a group of people who sued him before a US court for "organizing detention facilities where non-Serb women were systematically raped."

"Karadzic owes a few billion US dollars to the victims that sued him," the principal deputy of the international community's administrator in Bosnia, US diplomat Raffi Gregorian, told Dnevni avaz.

A group of more than 10 people, according to the report, sued Karadzic in 1993 before the US courts through the New York-based US Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR).

The group sued Karadzic for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, including organized systematic rape, using a law known as the Alien Tort Statute of 1789, which allows foreign citizens to indict people before US courts for violating human rights anywhere in the world.

Gregorian said that troops of the European Union Force (EUFOR) in Bosnia-Herzegovina recently measured Karadzic's house during a search in Pale, some 20 kilometres south-east of the capital Sarajevo.

The measurements would be needed for any valuation of the property.

Gregorian said that all of Karadzic's property could be confiscated to allow at least symbolic compensation to the victims.

Citing sources Dnevni avaz mentioned a possibility that the property of Karadzic's close relatives may also come into consideration for a possible pay-off.

Serbian authorities arrested Karadzic in Belgrade late Monday.

The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indicted him for war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and severe breaches of the Geneva Conventions during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Karadzic hid from justice for nearly 13 years before he was arrested. He had been living under a false identity and working in a private clinic in Belgrade as a doctor of alternative medicine. (dpa)