'Spider five' cleared of murder

The five were accused of crimes against Kosovo Albanians

By Jacky Rowland in Belgrade

A court in Belgrade has cleared five men of accusations of spying for France and of murdering two Kosovo Albanians during the Nato bombing campaign last year.

The judge ruled that there was no evidence to support the charges and he ordered that the men be released immediately.

The judge's decision to acquit the five men came a year after their arrest on charges of terrorism and spying for the French secret services.

The former Yugoslav authorities had accused the men of belonging to a shadowy organisation called "Spider", and of planning to assassinate then-President Slobodan Milosevic.

The prosecutor had called for all five to be convicted of espionage and had demanded the death penalty for three of the defendants accused of murder.

'Political motive'

Defence lawyers dismissed the case as politically motivated. They said the old regime was trying to pin all its past crimes on the five defendants.

The judge ruled that there was no evidence to convict the men of espionage or murder; however he did find them guilty of extorting money from Kosovo Albanians during the bombing campaign and of possessing explosives.

He ordered a sentence of one year, which the defendants had already served during their pre-trial custody.

The five men are expected to be released shortly.

Disappointment

Human rights activists are disappointed at the outcome of the case. They say they presented evidence to the court that three of the accused had participated in the killing of two Kosovo Albanians last year.

The prosecutor accepted this evidence, a decision which human rights lawyers describe as a breakthrough in a legal system which was, until recently, tightly controlled by the government.

But human rights activists agreed with the defence team that the trial was politically motivated, an attempt by the former regime to blame war crimes in Kosovo on foreign agents rather than Serbian security forces.