Chris Burford
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April 25, 2001
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Belgrade has released 143 Kosovo Albanian prisoners hours after charging almost 200 Yugoslav soldiers with war crimes.
The two simultaneous moves are seen as further significant signals in a break from the old Milosevic regime.
The 143 Kosovo Albanians convicted of terrorism in the 1999 rebellion against Serb rule were freed from jail on Wednesday.
They were convicted of attacking Serb policemen and Yugoslav army soldiers in the Kosovo town of Djakovica and sentenced last May to up to 13 years in prison.
The Albanians were handed over to the International Red Cross, which is responsible for arranging their transportation to Kosovo.
Hours earlier Yugoslav military officials announced that 183 army officers had been accused of committing war crimes during the Kosovo conflict.
The soldiers are accused of a variety of offences, including murder, harassment and assault, and the trials of some have already started.
A United Nations spokesman welcomed the arrests, saying they were an encouraging sign that Belgrade is committed to bringing to justice those guilty of crimes in Kosovo.
An army statement said the military prosecutor had ordered investigations against "soldiers, non-commissioned officers and officers ... for crimes resulting in deaths and injuries of civilians as well as deprivation of their basic human rights during combat activities in the province of Kosovo in 1998 and 1999.
"We want to expose individuals for their crimes and avoid collective guilt for the entire nation," an army legal officer said.
The military has previously said that 24 soldiers are facing -- or have faced -- legal action on similar charges.
The release of the Kosovo Albanian prisoners comes after the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that their sentences should be reviewed because of procedural errors during the trials last year.
They were released pending review of their sentences, but it is highly unlikely they will face new trials in a Yugoslav court.
Kosovo remains a province of Serbia -- the main republic in Yugoslavia, along with Montenegro -- but is now administered by the United Nations and NATO-led peacekeepers, and is outside Yugoslav federal jurisdiction.
"We were hostages of the former regime. We want to be declared innocent," said Zubi Kastriot of Djakovica as 126 cheering Albanian inmates left the prison in Nis. Others complained of appalling prison conditions.
The 17 other Albanians were freed from prisons in the towns of Vranje and Zrenjanin.
More than 1,000 ethnic Albanians were imprisoned in central Serbia when Serb troops pulled out of Kosovo in June 1999 after nearly three months of NATO-led air strikes forced them out of the province.
Hundreds of ethnic Albanians have been released since former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was ousted from power in October
While denying allegations of a systematic campaign of war crimes in Kosovo, the Yugoslav army has said before that if any of its troops had committed atrocities, they would be brought to justice.