Grenade blast near Kosovo police station; no casualties
Agence France Presse - July 17, 2003

PRISTINA - Unknown assailants on Thursday detonated a hand grenade near a police station in a northern Kosovo town, the day after four ethnic Albanians from the town were sentenced for war crimes, UN officials in the province said. There were no casualties or damage.

Two other grenades were found unexploded outside the police station, in the town of Podujevo said Derek Chappell, a spokesman for the UN police in the province.

He said the incident, which appeared to be an attempt to intimidate the police rather than attack them, was being investigated.

On Wednesday several hundred ethnic Albanian in Podujevo protested a landmark ruling before a Kosovo court, which sentenced four former rebels to between five and 17 years in prison for war crimes.

"If they wanted to attack the police they could have done so. I wouldn't say it was a deliberate attack, but an attempt to intimidate or warn the police," Chappell said.

Rustem Mustafa, once a senior officer in the now disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), and three of his associates were convicted of crimes including murder, illegal detention, inhumane treatment and torture.

Mustafa, known as Remi, was sentenced to 17 years for ordering the murder of five Kosovo Albanians and "failing to prevent illegal detention" in his zone of command during the 1998-1999 conflict.

The crimes were committed in what was then Mustafa's zone of command in the region of Podujevo, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Pristina, the capital of the southern Serbian province.

The police station in Podujevo houses both UN policemen and members of the local police force, the Kosovo Police Service.

NATO-led peacekeepers, KFOR, were deployed to dispose of the remaining hand grenades, Chappell said.

Kosovo, a southern Serbian province, has been under UN administration since NATO bombed Yugoslavia to force the withdrawal of Serb troops in 1999.

July 17, 2003 Thursday 5:03 AM Eastern Time

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