Court in Kosovo convicts 3 ex-rebels of war crimes
By NEBI QENA, Associated Press
Oct 2, 2009 5:02 AM CDT

An EU-run court convicted a Kosovo lawmaker and two other former ethnic Albanian rebels Friday for beating and torturing civilians during Kosovo's 1998-99 war.

A spokesman for the European Union's mission in Kosovo says the court's three-judge panel found Rrustem Mustafa and the two other former fighters guilty of "war crimes through inhumane treatment of civilian detainees and... beating and torture of civilian detainees."

The three were initially convicted by a U.N.-run court in 2003 , but Kosovo's Supreme Court in 2005 ordered a retrial. Mustafa, known as "Remi," is a Kosovo lawmaker and deputy leader of the governing party.

EU mission spokesman Karin Limdal says Mustafa was sentenced to four years in prison, Latif Gashi was sentenced to six years and Nazif Mehmeti to three years in prison.

Mehmeti was the head of the rebels' police unit in Kosovo's northern part while Gashi was the rebels' intelligence chief in that region. They both served under Mustafa in the now defunct Kosovo Liberation Army that fought a separatist war against Serbia.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia last year with strong backing from the U.S. and major European countries.

The country's authorities remain under loose international supervision and the EU's 2,000-strong police and justice mission is in charge of sensitive cases such as war crimes prosecutions.

Last month EU police arrested four Serbs suspected of committing war crimes against ethnic Albanian civilians.

About 10,000 people were killed during the Kosovo war as Serbia's forces cracked down on ethnic Albanian separatists, and more than 1,000 people remain missing.