After two years in prison, a group of ethnic Albanian former guerrillas were ordered released by Kosovo's Supreme Court on Friday, and their multiple murder case was returned to a lower court, Kosovo television reported Friday according to dpa. The group of four, known as the Llap group, was arrested two years ago by United Nations and NATO peacekeepers for killing five Kosovar Albanians and illegally detaining, beating and torturing eight others; and with beating and torturing one Kosovar Serb during the 1998-99 conflict. The four men, who are one-time members of the former Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) fighters, were arrested in 2002 during the wide international effort to prevent violence from lapping over from Kosovo during the neighbouring Macedonian, where ethnic Slavic-Albanian tensions played a key role. The four, including RRustem Mustafa, known as "Commander Remi", were sentenced to long-prison terms in 2003, but local Albanians protested loudly, calling the trial a "political charade" and accusing the international community of "balancing the justice between victims and villains".
