Three British army paratroopers may face charges over the fatal shooting of two Kosovo Albanians last year, the Ministry of Defence said yesterday.
The Ministry backtracked from an earlier statement that the three had been charged already, saying now that a preliminary investigation of the evidence was under way to decide if they should face formal charges and a possible court martial.
The soldiers, from the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, allegedly shot two men during a Kosovo Albanian victory parade in Pristina on July 3rd last year.
Fahri Bici (20) and Avni Dudi (24) were thought to be members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
The Ministry spokesman said the evidence was being studied. "It will not be known if they are to face any charges until they [the army's legal services] have done that assessment."
The men will remain in service while inquiries are carried out.
Two fighters were killed and two civilians injured in the incident. They and three other men were in a Vauxhall Astra when paratroopers opened fire on the vehicle.
Official reports said the patrol opened fire because they feared lives were at risk from a man firing celebratory shots into the air from the roof of the car.
Witness accounts said the paratroopers did not do enough to warn the people in the car, and no attempt was made to stop the vehicle before it was shot at.
Meanwhile, the NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo (Kfor) has banned men of combat age from crossing the administrative border into southern Serbia to help enforce a tense ceasefire in the area between Serbian police and ethnic Albanian rebels.
"Men aged 18-35 and who are travelling by themselves (or in groups with other men) are not authorised to enter Serbia," a Kfor spokesman, Sgt Pat McGuire, said.
Over the weekend, groups of up to 100 ethnic Albanians protested against the measure at the Outpost Sapper checkpoint on the demarcation line near the Serbian town of Dobrosin which is controlled by ethnic Albanian separatists.
Dobrosin lies inside a buffer zone stretching three miles into Serbia. The zone was established under an agreement reached last year between NATO and Yugoslavia, which makes the zone off limits to security forces from both sides, with the exception of lightly armed Serbian policemen.
But the power vacuum in the hilly and wooded border zone has allowed the rebels to set up bases just out of reach of the Serbian security forces.