A Greek court gave a prison guard a three-year suspended sentence for assisting a high-profile prisoner to escape by helicopter for the second time in three years, court officials said on Thursday. The Hollywood-style getaway of Vassilis Palaiokostas, 44, and his Albanian accomplice Alket Rijai, who had escaped from the …

The United Nations war crimes court in The Hague found five senior Serb officials guilty on Thursday of orchestrating the murder, torture and deportation of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, acquitting former Serbian President Milan Milutinovic. This is the first verdict on atrocities committed by Serb forces in the 1998-99 crackdown …

Despite the burning Skopje-Athens dispute over the name Macedonia and its historical and cultural heritage, Macedonia plans to ask Greek scientists for help in a project to excavate four major archeological sites, local media said on Wednesday. The country will spend a record 20 million euros in the next three …

Bulgarian MPs on Wednesday passed a near-unanimous decision to to expel independent MP Vladmir Kouzovc from parliament after his conviction for sexual relations with a 13-year old boy. Kouzov was elected to Parliament in June 2005 on the ticket of the ultra-nationalist Ataka party. In 2006, once it turned out …

The UK government has announced plans to reduce its staff in Kosovo’s EULEX mission as part of a cost-cutting drive resulting from the global financial crisis. “We have received some signals that the UK government is planning to reduce its staff under the law and order mission in Kosovo”, said …

Macedonia on Thursday marked the fifth anniversary of the death of President Boris Trajkovski in a plane crash in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a case that is still open and under investigation. The lack of an official conclusion on the causes of the crash has over the years led many in …

The Macedonian government generally respected the human rights of its citizens in 2008, with certain problems noted in the rule of law, and inadequate judicial and police procedures with criminal detentions, says the US State Department Country Report on Human Rights Practices. One of the main problems noted is the …

Kosovo’s government met with consultants Naco Innova on Thursday to discuss plans to revamp and assist in the privatization of Pristina International Airport. Naco Innova, a Dutch-American aviation consulting company, won the tender on January 26 and was on their first official visit to Pristina, meeting with a special governmental …

The US Department of State has criticised Romania in its annual human rights report, for ‘problems in several areas’ including government corruption, prison and detention center conditions and some restrictions on the freedom of the press, Newsin news agency reports. The report concludes that the Romanian government generally respected the …

Dozens of physically handicaped and disabled people on wheelchairs and crutches broke into the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim)-Croat Federation parliament in Sarajevo on Tuesday, protesting against belt-tightening legislation that will cut down on their social payments. The protest underlined the worsening economic and social conditions plaguing Bosnia on the heels of …