Rights group promises to provide lawyers for families of executed Bosnian Muslims in Serbia

A leading Serbian human rights group said Wednesday it will provide lawyers and legal help for the families of six young Bosnian Muslims executed in 1995 by Serb troops in a video recorded killing.

Natasa Kandic, director of the Humanitarian Law Fund, said in a statement that the legal help at the upcoming trial of five Serbs accused of the killing was agreed after a meeting with a Bosnian woman who recognized her son on the execution video broadcast on television.

The amateur footage, made by Serb troops, was first provided to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, by the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Fund. Later, it was broadcast at both Serbian and Bosnian television stations.

It showed six civilians taken from a truck, hands tied behind their backs and lined up on a hillside. Four were shot - one by one - in the backs. Two others were ordered to carry the bodies into a nearby barn, where they, too, were killed.

The footage was first shown in June in the U.N. tribunal's trial of Slobodan Milosevic, indicted for his alleged role in atrocities during the Balkan wars. Prosecution said it represented key evidence against the former Yugoslav president, the AP reports.

Their trial is expected to start later this year in Belgrade. They face up to 40 years in prison if convicted. Serbian law does not allow the death penalty.

As many as 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed when Bosnian Serb troops overran the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in 1995 in Europe's worst mass killing since World War II. A.M.