SWITZERLAND'S WAR CRIMES TRIAL LAUSANNE, Switzerland (Reuter) - Switzerland's first war crimes trial began Monday amid confusion over the identity of a Bosnian Serb accused of torture and murder. A lieutenant colonel presided over the trial of Goran Grabez, who appeared nervous on the first day of the proceedings which are expected to end Friday. The 32-year-old former driver from the Bosnian town of Prijedor faces a maximum 20 years jail if found guilty on four counts of war crimes committed at the Serb-run Omarska detention camp in northwestern Bosnia in July, 1992. ... Grabez was arrested two years ago in Geneva after Muslim refugees alleged he was a guard at Omarska and had tortured inmates. He denies the allegations, saying he was in Austria and Germany at the time. ... The prosecutor, Maj. Claude Nicati, said although the prosecution had yet to ask for a sentence, Grabez faced up to 20 years in jail under the Swiss military penal code if found guilty. "This is the first war crimes trial in our history. We have to judge this man," Nicati told Reuters.

BOSNIAN SERB ACQUITTED LAUSANNE, Switzerland (Reuter) - A Bosnian Serb accused of murder and torture at wartime detention camps was acquitted Friday by a military tribunal and awarded $68,500 from the state in damages. At the end of the country's first-ever war crimes trial, the court ordered Goran Grabez, 32, from the Bosnian town of Prijedor to be freed immediately and compensated him for his period in custody. ... The ruling, after a five-day trial, said the prosecutor failed to prove Grabez served in July 1992 in the Serb-run Omarska and Keretrem camps in northwestern Bosnia where he was alleged to have beaten and killed Muslim prisoners. Testimony from witnesses, including fellow asylum-seekers at a Geneva center where he was arrested in April 1995 after they said they recognized him as a camp guard, was too imprecise, the court found.