British Soldiers Charged Over Kosovo Albanian KillingsThree British soldiers have been charged over the killing of two armed ethnic Albanians in Kosovo last year, local reports said here on Monday, December 4.The Independent newspaper said the soldiers, from the British contingent in the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo, acted in self defense when shooting Fahri Bici, 20, and Avni Dudi, 24, both members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, in Pristina on July 3, 1999. The report said a pre-trial hearing had already taken place and that a full court-martial was due to take place soon. An inquiry into the killings had been carried out by the Defense Ministry but the final decision to charge the men involved local prosecutors in Kosovo who had been appointed by the United Nations, the newspaper said. Later, a Reuters report quoted a Defense Ministry spokesman as saying that he could not give any details of the charges but the charges would be "reasonably serious" as the case involved the deaths of two people. |
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