The 41-year-old man, not expected to be identified until a verdict is reached, is accused in a seven-page indictment of abusing 18 civilian Serbs in the early 1990s, Aftenposten reported.

The newspaper reported that the unnamed defendant came to Norway in 1993 with a wife and two children. He was arrested by Norwegian police in May 2007. He is on trial in Oslo.

His attorney, Heidi Bache-Wiig, told the judge that her client acknowledges some of the claims against him.

Even so, she said, the case should be dismissed because the laws applied to the case weren't in effect in 1992. Moreover, she added, her client wasn't a Norwegian citizen in 1992, so the alleged offenses were carried out by a foreigner in a foreign country.