April 08, 2007 9:16 PM

BELGRADE, Serbia-Serbia's Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a 13-year prison sentence for a former ethnic Albanian fighter convicted of taking part in the torture and rape of civilians at the end of the 1998-99 war in Kosovo province.

The defense appealed for Anton Lekaj, 26, to be sent back to Kosovo, a United Nations and NATO protectorate since 1999. But the court confirmed an earlier verdict that found him guilty of war crimes.

Lekaj was a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army which took up arms to separate Kosovo from Serbia. NATO's 1999 intervention in the conflict forced Serb government forces to halt their crackdown on the separatists and pull out of the province.

As Serbs were retreating in June 1999, Lekaj ambushed a wedding party of local Gypsies, an ethnic community that mostly tried to stay out of the Serb-Albanian fighting but was often targeted by Kosovo Albanians for loyalty to the Serbs.

Lekaj and several other KLA members abducted at least 11 Gypsies, raped a girl, sexually abused a man and severely beat the rest of the group for several days in a basement of a deserted hotel in southwestern Kosovo, according to the verdict.

Four of those abducted were later executed by Lekaj and his fellow-rebels.

Lekaj denied any wrongdoing and said he did not recognize the Serbian court.

Most Kosovo Albanians sought here for insurgency-related crimes remain beyond the reach of Serbia's judiciary because the province has been under U.N. and NATO control. Lekaj, however, was arrested during a car theft in neighboring Montenegro in 2004 and was later extradited to the Serbian capital Belgrade.

Kosovo's future status is currently under discussion at the U.N. Security Council. A U.N. envoy has proposed supervised independence for the province, a plan rejected by Serbia.