The United Nations war crimes tribunal has convicted a former Serbian police chief for his role in planning and instigating crimes against Kosovo Albanians in 1999.
The U.N. court in The Hague sentenced General Vlastimir Djordjevic Wednesday to 27 years in prison after finding him guilty of the persecution and murder of hundreds of ethnic Albanian civilians, and the forced deportation of hundreds of thousands more.
Djordjevic was arrested in 2007 in Montenegro. He was Serbia's assistant interior minister and top police officer over a four-year period beginning in 1997. He also was a close ally of the late former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.