SERBIAN POLICEMAN RECEIVES PRISON SENTENCE FOR MURDER OF ALBANIAN BOY

BOY PRISTINA, April 3 (Hina) - A district court in Pristina, capital of the southern Serbian province of Kosovo, on Wednesday sentenced Serbian policeman Boban Krstic to four years and six months in prison for killing six-year-old Albanian boy Fidan Brestovci and seriously wounding his mother, Makfira, on 27 July 1994. This was the first time that a Serbian police officer had been sentenced to a prison term for crimes over the majority ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo. The dead boy's parents and their lawyers announced they would file a complaint because they thought the sentence too lenient. The Pristina-based "Bujku" daily said on Wendesday that after the murder officer Krstic had been promoted to the post of a deputy commander of the police station in Kacanik. He had also participated in Serbian aggression against Bosnia-Herzegovina. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic stripped Kosovo of autonomy in 1989 and deployed a strong police force to rule the province with about 90 percent Albanian population by repression. (hina) vm jn 032029 MET apr 96