A UN court on Thursday, May 30 acquitted two former allies of late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic of setting up and arming notorious Serb paramilitary gangs that committed atrocities in Bosnia and Croatia during the Balkan wars in the 1990s, AP said.

The verdicts at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal came just three months after appeals judges at the tribunal acquitted the former chief of the Yugoslav National Army of aiding and abetting atrocities by rebel Serbs in Bosnia.

Both rulings support Belgrade's often-stated assertion that it didn't deliberately assist in atrocities committed by rebel Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia.

The two acquitted were Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic. A prosecutor had called for life sentences for both of them.

Stanisic, 62, was head of Serbia's state security service until Milosevic fired him in 1998. Simatovic, 63, was his deputy and headed the agency's special operations arm.

In a majority decision, the three-judge panel ruled that Serb fighters did commit crimes in Croatia and Bosnia, but that there was insufficient evidence linking Stanisic and Simatovic to the crimes.

Two of the three judges were "unable to conclude that the accused shared the intent to further the common criminal purpose" of an alleged criminal plan to drive non-Serbs out of large parts of Bosnia and Croatia, the tribunal said.

Neither man showed any emotion as Presiding Judge Alphons Orie ordered them freed. Prosecutors can appeal the acquittals.

Milosevic was named at the trial as part of the alleged criminal plan to drive non-Serbs out of parts of Bosnia and Croatia. Milosevic himself died in his UN cell in 2006 before judges in his long-running trial could reach verdicts on charges that he fomented violence throughout the Balkans in the 1990s.