A former Yugoslav army soldier charged for war crimes committed in Kosovo in 1999 went on trial before a Serbian court in Prokuplje today.
This is first trial before a Serbian court for war crimes committed during the 1998-99 war in Kosovo.
Ivan Nikolic was charged in connection with the killing of two ethnic Albanian civilians on May 24th, 1999, in a village located between the northern Kosovo town of Podujevo and the capital Pristina.
Nikolic, 30, had previously been charged with murder but the district court in the southern Serbian town of Prokuplje changed the indictment to war crime charges in April.
Some one hundred people protested against the trial in front of the court building, in a demonstration organised by the Association of War Veterans, which branded the process "political".
Also in April a prosecutor in Prokuplje brought war crimes charges against another two civilians for the murder of 19 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in March 1999, after the start of NATO's bombing campaign.
These were first indictments for war crimes in Kosovo to be brought by local courts.
On March 24th, 1999, NATO launched a 78-day long air war against Yugoslav armed forces, controlled by then president Slobodan Milosevic, after their crackdown on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians.
Milosevic and four other former top Yugoslav officials have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for war crimes committed in Kosovo during the war.
Milosevic, handed over to the UN tribunal in The Hague last year after being overthrown in October 2000, is currently on trial there for war crimes in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia.
AFP