A WIDNES TV worker, missing for a week in Serbia, has been found - behind bars in a Serb jail accused of "entering the country illegally".

Driver James Free, 33, of SNG Broadcast Services, an equipment rental firm and engineer Ken Suckling, 53, had been missing since they left Pristina to drive to Britain on September 25.

It was feared they had been attacked or kidnapped in Kosovo.

Their company raised the alarm when it did not hear from them.

UN police and K4 soldiers began looking for them on a wooded and narrow road leading to Tetovo, Macedonia. Interpol was also informed.

The search was called off when they were found - serving a 15-day sentence for driving in Yugoslavia without a visa

The Foreign Office broke the news of their whereabouts this week when the Yugoslav foreign ministry informed the Brazilian Embassy in Belgrade that they had been detained "for allegedly entering Serbia illegally".

They were arrested in the southern Serbian town of Vranje, 70km east of Pristina, shortly after they left the Kosovan capital 12 days ago.

Jim Akhurst of SNG said: "Vranje is certainly well off the route they were supposed to take but, for the moment, the main emotion is simply one of overwhelming relief that they are safe.

"Their families have been notified and are enormously relieved at this news.

"We are extremely grateful to the Foreign Office for its efforts in tracing them."

Prison official Momcilo Dezurni said the men were "safe and sound in our jail. We received them on September 25 and they have proved to be excellent inmates, extraordinary people and very fine gentlemen."

He said they were being "treated better than Yugoslavs because they were foreigners. They speak a little Serbian, so we have excellent communication. They are in the clothes they drove in, as they are serving a light sentence and will be leaving soon."

There remain unanswered questions about how the pair ended up in Serbia. To stray across the frontier, they would have had to turn left instead of right in southern Kosovo as they approached Macedonia.

Then they would have had to drive for more than an hour in the wrong direction before coming to a Serbian police border post in eastern Kosovo.

The men had spent two weeks in Pristina working to set up a public service television station funded by the UN and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Their company was providing hardware and technical support for the setting up of Radio Television Kosovo, which went on air on September 19.

They had been due to drive south through Macedonia to Greece en route back to Britain.

Widnesian James Free joined the company 18 months ago and has made several trips to the region in the past six months.

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