Thirteen Serb prisoners accused of genocide, mass-murder and war crimes have escaped from a UN-run detention facility in northern Kosovo. This is just the latest in a series of escapes of suspected war-criminals which further embarrasses Kosovo's already-shaky justice system.
Kosovo's civil administrator, Dr Bernard Kouchner said that an immediate inquiry would be launched.
The escape, which occurred at 9 p.m. local time, saw 15 prisoners escape, two of whom were recaptured shortly afterwards by French NATO peacekeepers. The break-out brings to 22 the number of escapees from UN facilities in seven months.
"It's more than embarrassing, it's very, very disturbing and shocking not only because these people are at large, but what's disastrous is the signal that it sends to the majority of Kosovars who are waiting for us to administer justice in cases of war crimes," said UN spokeswoman, Ms Susan Manuel.
The escapees, who included two Serbs arrested for genocide, three for mass murder, five for war crimes, one for murder and one for arson and theft, overpowered UN police guards in the north Mitrovica detention centre, robbed them and then fled over a barbed-wire fence.
NATO peacekeepers immediately launched a large-scale search operation, involving roadblocks, searches of apartments and local woods, as well as alerting border check-points on Kosovo's boundary with Serbia.
Late yesterday the suspects were still at large.
A UN spokesman said that one prisoner was being returned to his cell after being allowed to make a telephone-call, when other prisoners in the room overpowered the Nepalese UN policeman, took his gun, and tied him up with lengths of cloth. Another report said the gun was smuggled in to the prisoners.
The prisoners then used his keys to free other inmates, before bursting into the duty-room and overpowering at gun-point two Nepalese and one Indian officer, before robbing them of DM6,150 (£2,050) and fleeing over the barbed wire surrounding the detention-centre.
The prisoners had been in detention for around 15 months, after being arrested by NATO troops shortly after they entered Kosovo last June following NATO's 78-day bombing campaign.
Kosovo's justice-system is slow-moving in the extreme, say international critics, because of a shortage of international judges, and because the low-wages and the bias of local Albanian judges towards against Serbs, and vice-versa, makes a mockery of an effective legal process.