COURT QUASHES SENTENCES FOR 142 KOSOVARS CONVICTED OF TERRORISM

BELGRADE, April 23 (Hina) - The Serbian Supreme Court on Monday quashed verdicts for a group of 142 Kosovo Albanians from Djakovica, convicted of terrorism, and returned their case to the court of first instance for a retrial. The court also quashed detention rulings for the Kosovars, also known as the "Djakovica group", ordering that they be released tomorrow. International organisations, especially the OSCE and the EU, had demanded the release of the 'Djakovica group' due to irregularities in the investigative proceedings and unsubstantiated claims in the indictment. The Supreme Court said the verdicts had been quashed following appeals against serious breaches of the criminal procedure, wrong and incomplete facts, and wrong implementation of the substantive law. On May 22 last year, a court in Nis sentenced the group to a total of 1,632 years in prison due to terrorism. All indictees pleaded not guilty to their charges, claiming they had been arrested on May 10-11, 1999 in downtown Djakovica and that they had been in their houses during the shelling of the town. The charges also included the murder of a policeman and two soldiers and the wounding of five policemen and two soldiers in Djakovica in May 1999. (hina) rml