Fifteen Serbs suspected mainly of war crimes, mass murder or genocide fled a UN-run prison in the northern Kosovo town of Kosovska Mitrovica, a UN police spokesman told AFP Sunday, reporting the latest in a series of embarrassing escapes.
Two of the prisoners were immediately recaptured, but the escape, which took place at around 9:00 p.m. (1900 GMT) Saturday, brings the number of prisoners to escape from the town to 22 in seven months.
UN spokesman Michael Keats said that when a prisoner was brought back to his cell, detainees grabbed a police officer escorting him, beat him over the head with a pistol they had hidden in the cell, tied up him with strips of cloth and took his keys.
The prisoners then unlocked other cells, Keats said. The escapees entered the duty room, held up other officers and two translators at gunpoint, tied them up and stole 6,150 German marks (3,144 euros, 2,800 dollars).
The prisoners, one third of the prison's inmates, then fled, scaling a barbed wire fence.
Two of the 15, accused of murder, were arrested soon afterwards by soldiers of the KFOR peacekeeping force, the spokesman said. A search was underway for the rest, who were still at large, he said.
Four of the escapees were accused of war crimes, three of genocide, four of mass murder, one of murder and one of arson and theft, Keats said. They were mostly arrested in July and August last year following the arrival of KFOR and the United Nations in the wartorn southern Yugoslavian province.
Any escape of Serbian war crimes suspects is bound to infuriate Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority population, which was the victim of a campaign of terror and ethnic cleanisng at the hands of Yugoslavian forces and Serbian paramilitaries during the province's 1998-1999 civil war.
The string of high profile escapes has been a humiliation for Mitrovica's multinational police force. The prison is in the northern, Serbian majority part of the divided town, a short drive from Serbia-proper, beyond the reach of international authorities.
A KFOR spokesman said that additional security measures had been taken north of Mitrovica, but that no more escapees had been recaptured by 10:30 a.m. (0830 GMT) Sunday.
Five Serbs escaped from the prison in February and April. On August 4, three Serbs detained pending trial for war crimes and genocide escaped after being transfered from the jail to a hospital, where they were being treated under police guard.
On July 5 a Serb accused of murder escaped from the same hospital, and one day later a Serb accused of attacking a KFOR soldier escaped from a military hospital in Kosovo Polje, central Kosovo.
A multinational police force under UN command has been in charge of civilian law enforcement in the Yugoslavian province of Kosovo since a NATO bombing campaign brought to an end the 1998-1999 civil war and paved the way for the arrival of KFOR and the UN administration -- PRISTINA (AFP)
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