KFOR Troops Detain 3 War Crimes Suspects

German troops in Kosovo on Friday arrested three suspected war criminals accused of killing ethnic Albanians, the KFOR peacekeeping force said.

The news came on the same day that Dutch troops who patrol the town of Orahovac, where the arrests were made, were told that they would make way for Russian peacekeepers.

The move is bound to infuriate local Albanians, who have long expressed fears that the Russians, traditional allies of the Serbs, will allow war crimes suspects to slip out of the divided town’s Serbian enclave.

Serbs insist that they have grouped together in one area simply to protect themselves from ethnic Albanian attacks.

KFOR, short for the Kosovo Force led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, has said the Russians will be evenhanded.

The German forces, backed by the Dutch, arrested the three suspects Friday morning after an investigation lasting several weeks, KFOR spokesman Maj. Bengt Flykt said.

“They were arrested for crimes committed in the spring of 1999--that is, killing, looting and arson,” he said.

He said the three were being transferred into the custody of the United Nations, which oversees Kosovo’s civil administration.

The U.N. has asked KFOR to help apprehend war crimes suspects to face trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

KFOR officials said they could not provide any more details about the identities of the three suspects.

Friday’s arrests were not the first by KFOR troops looking for those accused of atrocities during NATO’s air war against Yugoslavia, or during fighting between Serbs and Albanian guerrillas last year.

In late June, British troops arrested two men, one suspected of 56 slayings and the other linked to 46 killings.

Orahovac, in Kosovo’s German-controlled sector, was the scene of heavy fighting between Serbian forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army last year.

Like the divided northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica, it has become a hot spot of tensions between the Albanian majority and the Serbs.

But while Kosovska Mitrovica took a step toward normalcy Friday with the return of five Albanian families to their homes in the Serbian part of town, the arrival of Russians in Orahovac is viewed with apprehension, at least for the short term.

Kosovo Albanians have staged daily anti-Russian marches through the hillside town.

The Serbs accuse local Albanians of kidnapping or killing anyone who leaves their enclave and of occupying their homes.

Lt. Col. Tony Van Loon, the commander of the Dutch forces, said his soldiers would probably begin handing over control to the Russians on Monday.

NATO has decided that the Dutch peacekeepers should move to the town of Suva Reka, also in the German sector.

Van Loon insisted that the timing of the arrests was not linked to the announcement that his troops would leave Orahovac. “It’s pure coincidence,” he said.