World News 04-09-2000 War Criminals In Prison Breakout who: 15 alleged Serb war criminals what: Escape from UN detention centre where: Kosovo when: Yesterday snippet: "Thirteen Serb prisoners accused of genocide, mass murder and war crimes were on the run last night," reports The Independent, "after escaping from a United Nations detention centre in Kosovo." They overpowered a UN police guard in Mitrovica, reportedly an Italian, and stole his keys to the cells before escaping over a barbed wire fence. Fifteen escaped in all, but two were recaptured soon after. "This is a very bad signal for the rest of the people in Kosovo who had depended on us to bring people to justice from the war of last year," admitted UN spokeswoman Susan Manuel. "The prisoners had been held since Nato-led troops took over the province last year," explains Jacqui Goddard in The Express, "after Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was defeated in a 78-day conflict." Three of them had been charged with genocide and four with war crimes; four were being held for mass murder, one for murder and one for arson and theft. "The escape is the second in two months from Mitrovica," says Julius Strauss, Balkans Correspondent to The Telegraph, "which witnessed scores of violent clashes between Serbs in the north and ethnic Albanians in the south since Yugoslav troops left Kosovo last June". [... more]

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