WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 (UPI) -- The NATO-led Kosovo Protection Force on Monday captured three of the first four Kosovo Albanian men indicted by an international criminal court for war crimes violations, including the alleged killing of 22 ethnic Albanians and Serbs in a prison camp in the summer of 1998.
The International Criminal Court at The Hague unsealed a January indictment naming the four men this week. KFOR troops detained three of them, and they will face charges at The Hague.
They are the first Kosovo Albanians to be indicted, a move NATO Secretary-General George Robertson pointed to as evidence of the court's fair approach.
"This should also send a message that we will act against any person indicted for war crimes, regardless of their ethnicity. Each fugitive sent to The Hague makes it easier to build a lasting peace in the Balkans," Robertson said Monday.
The three captured men include Haradin Bala (aka Shala), Isak Musliu (aka Qerqiz) and Agim Murtezi (aka Murrizi), all members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, an insurgent group seeking independence from Serbia and the former Yugoslavia. They were all allegedly guards at the Lapusnik Prison Camp in Kosovo, which was under the control of KLA commander Fatmir Limaj.
Limaj was indicted in the same court document but was not among those detained by NATO forces.
According to the court, the men unlawfully seized at least 35 Serb and Albanian civilians from the municipalities of Stimlje, Glogovac and Lipljan in Kosovo, and forcibly brought them to Lapusnik.
There they personally imprisoned, beat, tortured and, in some cases, killed their prisoners, or aided and abetted others carrying out the same treatment, the indictment said.
The men allegedly killed 11 prisoners in the camp between June 24 and July 25, 1998. They are accused of shooting 11 of the prisoners in the mountains near the prison camp after Serb forces overran the facility around July 25, 1998.
The alleged crimes took place prior to the NATO-led war to expel Serb forces from Kosovo.
While former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is at The Hague, two other notorious war criminals from the former Yugoslavia are still being sought: Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.
