EU judges open key Kosovo war crimes trial

(PRISTINA) - European judges opened a war crimes trial Wednesday against a former Kosovo guerilla commander and two fighters accused of torturing ethnic Albanians.

Rrustem Mustafa, a 38-year-old former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) commander, is accused of unlawful detention, inhumane treatment and torture of five ethnic Albanians during Kosovo's 1998-1999 war.

The case against Mustafa, Latif Gashi and Nazif Mehmeti, both 48, has become a sensitive one in Kosovo.

Mustafa, whose nom de guerre was Remi, is a war hero and parliamentary deputy high in the ranks of Prime Minister Hashim Thaci's governing Democratic Party of Kosovo.

His case was handed over to judges from the European Union's rule-of-law EULEX mission in Kosovo by their United Nations predecessors.

Four years ago, an international panel of Kosovo's Supreme Court overturned a 2003 verdict by UN judges who sentenced Mustafa to 17 years in prison and Gashi and Mehmeti to 13 and 10 years respectively.

They had been found guilty of murdering the five ethnic Albanians in the Llap region around the northern town of Podujevo which was commanded by Mustafa during the conflict.

There was no mention on Wednesday of the murder charges.

The accused "incurred personal and superior responsibility for the war crimes of inhumane treatment, immense suffering or violation of bodily integrity or health, application of measures of intimidation of terror and torture," prosecutor Robert Dean told a packed courtroom.

Earlier, Prime Minister Thaci, the former leader of the KLA's political wing during the war, expressed confidence the trio would be cleared of the war crimes charges.

"Kosovo government fully believes in the justice authorities, as well as in the innocence of our fellow fighters. We as Kosovo institutions fully believe that they will be released not guilty, as they are," Thaci said Tuesday.

The European judges are part of an EU mission launched in December in place of the UN administration in the breakaway Serbian province since its war pitting the KLA against Belgrade-backed forces.

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian-dominated parliament seceded from Serbia in February 2008.

Its independence is now recognised by 61 countries, including 22 of the 27 EU member nations, but rejected by Serbia, which accuses the KLA of war crimes against Kosovo Serbs.