Former Kosovo rebel commander convicted of 1999 murder

By MIKE CORDER
Associated Press

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A former commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army has been found guilty of arbitrarily detaining and torturing prisoners perceived as supporters of Serbia and murdering one of them a late 1990s war for Kosovo’s independence. The commander, Salih Mustafa, was sentenced to 26 years’ imprisonment for the crimes committed at a KLA compound in Zllash, Kosovo, in April 1999. He was acquitted of one charge of mistreating detainees. He had pleaded not guilty. The presiding judge called Friday’s conviction a “milestone” for a special court that was established in the Netherlands to investigate war crimes from the 1998-1999 conflict that killed more than 10,000 people, most of them Kosovo Albanians.