Kosovo Supreme Court decides on retrial for former rebels

Associated Press, Jul 22, 2005 2:36 PM

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro-Kosovo's Supreme Court has decided to give a retrial to a former ethnic Albanian rebel commander and his associates convicted on war crimes in the province two years ago, a lawyer for one of the defendants said.

Rebel commander Rrustem Mustafa and three of his wartime associates were sentenced in 2003 to prison terms ranging from five to 17 years for ordering the killings, illegal arrests and torture of fellow ethnic Albanians suspected of collaborating with the Serb regime.

The court's decision followed appeals by the lawyers, said Tome Gashi, the lawyer for Naim Kadriu, one of the defendants in the group.

U.N. officials were not immediately available to confirm the decision.

The court decided to released the four from prison to await the retrial on the condition they stay in Kosovo and don't contact witnesses involved in the case or witnesses' families, Gashi said.

The four were the first former ethnic Albanian rebels convicted of war crimes in the province. The case was handled by U.N.-appointed judges and prosecutors.

Mustafa was one of the most senior former commanders in the now-defunct Kosovo Liberation Army, the guerrilla force that fought against Serb forces in the province's 1998-1999 war. The three others served under his command in that zone.

Meanwhile, in another separate case, the district court in Pristina on Friday sentenced Mehmet Morina, a 29 year-old ethnic Albanian man, to 18 years in prison for the attempted murder of a Serb during last year's ethnic riots in Kosovo, said Aqif Tuhina, the lawyer for the defendant. Tuhina said he would appeal the verdict.

Mobs of ethnic Albanians targeted the Serb minority in violent attacks throughout the province in 2004, leaving 19 people killed and some 900 injured, in what was the worst outbreak of violence since the end of the war in 1999, when the province was put under U.N. administration.