Captured Serb 'Mercenaries' Face Libya Trial

"Him a sniper?... A pure lie!" So says Milan Djunic, father of 27-year-old Milorad Djunic, one of five Serbs captured in Libya who faces trial for having allegedly worked as a mercenary for ousted dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

The five men all deny the claim, saying they were working in Libya for a construction company when they fell into the hands of the rebels-turned-rulers of the North African country.

Djunic says he last heard from his son on August 12, when he left to work for the Libyan-Serbian construction company Zazura on repairing roads there.

He said he only heard of the arrest of his son, who formerly worked in the family's fast food shop in the eastern town of Loznica, from the media.

In late August two Russian journalists located the five Serbian nationals, having heard that they had been arrested on suspicion of being mercenaries.

The correspondents from the Moscow daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, Aleksander Koc and Dmitry Steshin, identified the men as Zoran Nikolic, Nedeljko Milanovic, Milorad Djunic, Milic Martinovic and Vojislav Niciforovic.

They said the five Serbs were being held "in improvised detention" in a facility where they were forced to sleep on the floor, but their captors were "not beating them and they are giving them food".

The reporters said they managed to find the men after they interviewed a rebel leader put in charge of the airport in Tripoli.

Serbia's Defence Minister, Dragan Sutanovac, has since denied that the five Serbs were members of the Serbian military.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry said it was aware that five men were being held in custody in Zintan and it was doing everything to set them free.

Nuredin Surmani, representative in  Serbia of Libya's new regime, said the group would be tried immediately after the new government in Tripoli is formally formed next week.

"They argue that they are construction workers but they were caught in suspicious places where fighting was going on," the Belgrade daily newspaper Danas quoted Surmani as saying.

The Zazura company for which they allegedly worked is not a registered firm in Serbia. The country's Business Register has no data on a firm with that name nor does the Chamber of Commerce have it on the list of Serbian construction companies.

Only two local companies, Energoprojekt and Ivan Milutinovic, were officially working in Libya at the time. Other companies that have operated in Libya are mostly small in size and have been working as subcontractors to large global players.

A Croatian media report on Tuesday said representatives of the new Libyan regime had already killed 12 Serb and nine Croat "mercenaries" in Misrata.

The Vecernji List newspaper claimed that the men were seized in an insurance building in the city of Misrata.

The newspaper said the Serbs and Croats were only some of 85 alleged mercenaries who had been killed by the new regime in Misrata. It claimed that the others were from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Ukraine, Russia and Colombia.

Surmani of the Libyan embassy could not confirm any reports about 85 mercenaries being executed in Misrata.