A court in Warsaw acquitted three police officers, Wednesday, charged with misconduct during a shootout in the village of Magdalenka, near Warsaw in 2003.

Individuals standing trial included the former chief of the Warsaw antiterrorist unit, the former head of the department for combating criminal terror at Warsaw Police Headquarters and former deputy commanding officer of the Warsaw police.

One policeman was killed, two criminals and 17 police were wounded in a shoot out in the normally sleepy village of Magdalenka on March 9, 2003.

The quaint tree-lined village, home to well-off Warsaw commuters to the south of the city, was the site of one of the most violent armed confrontations in recent history. An attempt at detaining two gangsters by police turned into a shoot-out between an antiterrorist unit and an organized crime group. The officers were fired at with machine guns, grenades with some wounded following explosives going off after they planted in roadside cars.

The police wanted to detain gangster Robert Cieślak, thought to be responcible for the murder of a police officer the year before.

The prosecutor had accused the policemen of failing to conduct a proper reconnaissance of the area and of not providing medical services at the site.

But in her justification of the verdict, Judge Beata Najiar said the operation was without precedent and the course of events could not be have been predicted.

"All of the charges have proved groundless and thus cannot be basis for the conviction of the defendants," she said. (pg/ab)