http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/news.php3?id=261269&section=Kosovo

Serbs, OSCE Criticize Kosovo Genocide Verdict

PRISTINA, Jan 19, 2001 -- (Reuters) Kosovo Serbs and international officials
united on Friday in criticizing a local court's conviction of a Serb man for
genocide.

In what is believed to be the first conviction on the charge in the province, a
court
in the northern town of Mitrovica on Thursday evening sentenced 52-year-old
Miroslav Vuckovic to 14 years in prison for genocide, although he was acquitted
on related murder charges.

A panel of four Kosovo Albanian judges and one international judge deliberated
for 12 hours before delivering the verdict, which is likely to raise fresh
concerns
about the impartiality of post-war Kosovo's troubled justice system.

"Our concern is that the evidence presented does not justify the verdict," said
spokeswoman Claire Trevena for the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe (OSCE).

"We're calling for a review to take place as soon as possible," she told
reporters.

Vuckovic, who had pleaded not guilty, was accused of belonging to a Serb
paramilitary group which terrorized ethnic Albanians in northern Kosovo during
NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

FIRST GENOCIDE CONVICTION

Officials and lawyers following the case said it was the first genocide
conviction in
Kosovo and could be the first on Yugoslav territory since World War Two.

Ethnic Albanian prosecutors justified the decision to charge him with genocide
by
saying the group had been trying to destroy the Kosovo Albanian community by
threatening to kill people and looting and torching their houses.

International experts, however, had expressed amazement at the genocide charge.

"The verdict is shocking and I would expect it to be reviewed by an
international
appeal panel immediately," said a U.N. legal official in the province who
declined
to be named.

An international prosecutor in Mitrovica not involved in the case said a newly
passed UN regulation meant future trials would be heard by two international
judges and one local judge.

It "would obviously change the dynamics of the voting", prosecutor Michael
Hartmann told Reuters late on Thursday.

"We really, at this point, have to leave the verdict with the Kosovo judiciary,"
said
Susan Manuel, a spokeswoman for the U.N. administration which has run
Kosovo since the end of NATO's 1999 bombing campaign to drive out Serb
forces.

"He can appeal, and, frankly, it will be a more independent judiciary he will be
facing on appeal," she said.

A local Serb leader said the legal system's bias will not change until Yugoslav
judges are brought back to Kosovo or until international judges hear and make
decisions on all cases.

"There is a very obvious lack of confidence in the court," said Oliver Ivanovic,
president of Mitrovica's Serbian National Council grouping. "We will not achieve
anything before we have a real, independent court."