Serbian Police

Throughout the opening day on Monday, Albanians wearing the traditional plis cap or T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Liria ka emer" ("Freedom has a name") made their voices heard in the Dutch city as opening statements were delivered in the trial of Thaci and his wartime comrades turned politicians, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi and Rexhep Selimi.

Jakup Krasniqi told the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague during opening statements in the case against him and three other ex-guerrillas that he denies the charges, some of which he described as "absurd".

Krasniqi, 72, told the court he had nothing to do with the war crimes and crimes against humanity mentioned in the indictment.

"We refuse to have our history distorted," one protester said when he took loud speaker in his hand to address the protest.

Tahir Citaku made a trip of more than 700 kilometres from the Swiss city of Basel to The Hague to protest against the trial.

 Tahir Citaku. Photo: BIRN.

Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci and his three co-defendants went on trial at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers on Monday morning, charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed between at least March 1998 and September 1999 in Kosovo and neighbouring Albania during and just after the war with Serbian forces.

On April 3, the four wartime leaders will be together again, this time before the prosecutors at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague courtroom to hear the charges against them read out in the courtroom as their trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity begins.

"On March 24, I noticed that my parents were worried more than ever. It was an anxious day. My father did not have to go to work," Dimitrijevic told BIRN. "In the evening we heard that the bombing had started and there were explosions."

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, - Kosovo Serb Zlatan Arsic, a resident of the Ajnovce village near Kosovska Kamenica, has been arrested for alleged war crimes, Tanjug learns.

Arsic, 45, was arrested at the Bela Zemlja administrative crossing and the Serbian government Office for Kosovo-Metohija immediately assigned an attorney to him.

Kosovo's Special Prosecution announced on Tuesday that a Kosovo Serb policeman had been arrested on war crimes charges for allegedly beating and torturing a person at the police station in Kamenice/Kamenica in 1999, while on official duty.

BELGRADE - In cooperation with the Security Information Agency and prosecutor's offices in Belgrade and Novi Sad, Serbian police have arrested three people suspected of the criminal offence of calling for a violent change of the constitutional order.

In the afternoon of July 23, 1999, Slavica Popovic's father, brother and uncle were out in the fields harvesting wheat in the central Kosovo village of Gracka e Vjeter/Staro Gracko when they were killed, along with 11 of their neighbours.

"Since then we have been waiting to know who killed them, and who is responsible. But we've never received an answer," Popovic told BIRN.