The former Serbian police chief and deputy interior minister, Vlastimir Djordjevic, was sentenced to 27 years in prison for war crimes, by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, on Wednesday.

Trial judges found him guilty of the murder of 724 Kosovo Albanians in Kosovo in 1999, as well as the coordination of a secret operation to conceal evidence by burying bodies in mass graves.

The Milosevic regime in Belgrade was, at the time, engaged in a bitter struggle against the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Judges said that Djordjevic played a crucial role in a joint criminal enterprise that coordinated the murder, persecution and deportation of Kosovo Albanian civilians.

The judges said Djordjevic was criminally responsible for failing to prevent atrocities and punish Serbian troops for crimes in Kosovo. The defence had argued that the crimes were isolated incidents by Serbian forces against terrorists, therefore legitimate actions under customary international law.

NATO carried out a bombing campaign to force the former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw Serbian troops from Kosovo, between March and June 1999, when more than 800,000 Kosovo Albanians fled the province - mostly to neighbouring Albania and Macedonia.

Judges said many refugees were fleeing a "deliberate campaign of violence and terror against Kosovo Albanian civilians by Serbian forces", as well as the NATO bombardment. The panel concluded that it was satisfied that the exodus was part of a campaign of terror and extreme violence designed by Belgrade, to change the demographic composition of Kosovo - and that this was a "compelling factor" in the judgement.