The Hague - The UN war crimes tribunal ICTY on Thursday served a 12-year prison term to Johan Tarculovski for crimes against ethnic Albanians in Macedonia, while acquitting former Macedonian Interior Minister Ljube Boskoski on all charges.

The two men were facing charges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in connection with violence against ethnic Albanians in the village of Ljuboten, near the Macedonian capital Skobje, in August, 2001.

A statement by the ICTY said a Macedonian police unit commanded by Tarculovksi had entered the village and shot and killed six unarmed ethnic Albanians in the period August 12-15.

Thirteen other residents were severely mistreated, with 10 of them beaten at a police checkpoint and later on in a police station in the Skopje. One of the victims died there.

The court also said at least 12 houses in the village were set ablaze, while Albanian men fleeing the village were subject to cruel treatment at a police checkpoint and at several police stations in Skopje.

Boskoski, 47, had been charged with overall command responsibility and for failing to look into the crimes and see that they were punished. But the ICTY's Trial Chamber II said the proceedings had not established that he had failed to take the necessary measures.

But Tarculovksi had a direct role in the incidents, with the chamber declaring him "guilty for ordering, planning and instigating the crimes committed in Ljuboten," the ICTY statement said.

The chamber did not that Tarculovski himself had been acting under orders, but that the evidence did not permit identifying who was responsible for those orders, other than that it was someone in a "superior" position, presiding Judge Kevin Parker said.

Boskoski, a nationalist politician, was regarded at the time as one of the agitators in the Macedonian government, but was soon dismissed.

He had argued that he initially knew nothing about the incidents in Ljuboten and at the time was only informed about a normal police operation there.

The Ljuboten events came shortly before the Ohrid peace agreement under which NATO came in to put an end to the violence between the Slav majority and Albanian ethnic minority in Macedonia. (dpa)