Three former Serbian fighters, including special police commander Vladan Krstovic, are accused of war crimes during an attack on the Kosovo village of Ljubenic that left 46 ethnic Albanians dead.

The case against Vladan Krstovic, Lazar Pavlovic and Milan Ivanovic for the attack on Ljubenic during the Kosovo war on April 1, 1999, during which 46 people were killed and 11 wounded, began on Monday at a closed pre-trial hearing at the Belgrade-based special court.

The attack took place during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia aimed at ending President Slobodan Milosevic’s offensive against the ethnic Albanian fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

The bodies of 34 of the victims from Ljubenic were later found in a mass grave in Batajnica, near Belgrade. Four victims are still listed as missing.

According to the prosecution, the three men were all Yugoslav Army troops and committed the crime together with two other servicemen, Nenad Lekic, who is currently in Sweden and for whom the prosecution has issued an extradition request, and Predrag Vukovic, who is on the run.

The prosecution claims all men were members of the reserve squad of the Yugoslav Army.

However, some of them, like Krstovic, who is now a Serbian special police commander and who testified as a witness during a previous trial of 11 Serbian fighters for war crimes in the Kosovo villages of Ljubenic, Pavlan, Zahac and Cuska, has claimed that he was always a police officer and never a Yugoslav Army serviceman.

Krstovic has said that he knew the majority of the indicted fighters, and that during 1998 when the conflict erupted in Kosovo, he was part of a special police unit alongside some of them.

“During the NATO bombing I was actively working at the police station in Pristina,” Krstovic said last year, but refused to provide more details, saying that he feared that his testimony could endanger his defence.

Krstovic was previously tried for but acquitted of the attempted murder of kickboxer Goran Kresic in 2007.

His name has been also linked to the arrest of former leader of Serbia’s special operations unit, Milorad Ulemek, known as Legija, who was sentenced to 40 years in jail for his role in the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic in March 2003, although Krstovic has denied any involvement in the killing.

This is the second case related to the war crimes committed in the village of Ljubenic to be staged by Serbian war crimes prosecution. In February this year, nine former members of the Yugoslav Army's 177th intervention squad were convicted of killing over 100 Albanian civilians during attacks on four villages, including Ljubenic.