A court in the Serbian province of Kosovo has convicted 17 ethnic Albanians of armed resistance to Serbian rule and sentenced them to between four and 20 years in prison.

Two other ethnic Albanians were acquitted.

During the trial in the provincial capital, Pristina, the defendants denied the charges against them, which included belonging to an armed separatist group - the Kosovo Liberation Army - and mounting attacks on Serbian targets.

The 17 men arrived in the court surrounded by a heavy ring of security. Serb police, some wearing riot gear and carrying rifles, stood guard outside the court as the defendants were led into the building.

All the defendants claimed they were innocent and beaten while in police custody. Some gave gruesome accounts of how they were stripped naked, doused with water and electrocuted by their captors.

Their lawyers say medical evidence backed up some of those claims, yet they were not taken into account during the trial.

More than half of the men received sentences ranging between 10 and 20 years.

Their lawyers say the trial was a gross miscarriage of justice. One said his client, who was charged with attacking a Serb police station, had video evidence to demonstrate he was at a wedding at the time the attack took place, but he was not allowed to show the video in court.

For many years the majority ethnic Albanian population - which makes up 90% of the population of in Kosovo - has been demanding independence from Serbia.

A BBC correspondent in Pristina says there has been a recent increase in trouble in the region and there are growing fears that the shadowy Kosovo Liberation Army will become more violent.
 

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