Four men charged with arson in Sweden's worst fire plead innocent

GOTEBORG, Sweden (AP) -- Four men charged with setting Sweden's worst fire went on trial today, watched by hundreds of survivors and relatives of victims from the blaze that ripped through a dance hall packed with teens, killing 63 people.

''My client ... denies responsibility for aggravated arson,'' said Goeran Bergendahl, attorney for Shoresh Kaveh, 19. ''He admits to having set fire to a paper under a chair in the emergency staircase,'' but did not intend to hurt anybody.

Prosecutors used diagrams and photos to show how the Oct. 29, 1998, blaze broke out in a lower-level emergency stairwell, and rapidly spread up to the second-floor dance jammed with teen-agers, mostly immigrants' children. Two hundred people were injured.

Charged with Kaveh were: Housein Arsani, 19; Mohammad Mohammadamini, 21; and Meysam Mohammadyeh, 19 -- all Iranian-born Swedish residents.

The trial was expected to last about two weeks.