For Charles Zentai, Tuesday was a good day: His extradition from Australia to Hungary was halted at the last minute after the government in Budapest withdrew its opposition to the 87-year-old's application for bail. Zentai, who now lives in Perth, Western Australia, is suspected of having tortured and murdered the 18-year-old Hungarian Jew Peter Balazs in November 1944 and then dumping his body in the Danube River.

The Australian police had arrested Zentai in July 2005 -- but the trial and the decision about what to do with the elderly man were repeatedly postponed. It looks increasingly unlikely that he will ever face justice in a Hungarian court.

Zentai is just one of dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals around the world who have evaded justice. The cases are often postponed and eventually fall apart, because the accused is deemed not fit to stand trial, there are no more living witnesses or the relevant documents are now missing. Respected historians estimate that at least 200,000 Germans and Austrians were perpetrators in the Holocaust. German prosecutors have investigated 106,000 suspects, but only 6,500 were ever found guilty and sentenced -- a poor result.

One of the most recent failures was when a planned Nazi war crime trial in Germany collapsed in January. The regional court in Aachen, western Germany, proved unable to open a case against the former SS soldier Heinrich Boere. He was "incapable of attending court as a defendant due to various severe health problems," went the justification.

The 87-year-old Boere is accused of shooting dead three innocent people as part of the "Silbertanne" ("Silver Pine") squad in the Netherlands in 1944. According to several court reports, Boere and a companion shot dead the three unarmed civilians between July and September 1944: Fritz Bicknese, a pharmacist, in Breda, a bicycle dealer Teun de Groot in Voorschoten and F.W. Kusters, in Wassenaar. Boere confessed to the killings after he was captured by US forces at the end of World War II but he escaped before he could be put on trial. He has lived for decades in Germany, just on the other side of the Dutch border and everything indicates that he will go on evading justice.

'A Trial Doesn't Make Sense Any More'

The Dortmund state prosecutor's office, which is the regional office responsible for dealing with Nazi war crimes, has lodged a complaint against the decision not to open a trial. The prosecutor is of the opinion that Boere was mentally fit to stand trial. "We have to investigate this carefully now," senior state prosecutor Ulrich Maass told SPIEGEL ONLINE. However, Boere's lawyer, Gordon Christiansen, is unperturbed. "I would be very surprised if something were still to happen there," Christiansen told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

The Cologne-based lawyer said his client could no longer walk, had serious heart problems and his condition was continuing to deteriorate. "A trial doesn't make sense any more," he said. However, Christiansen said that investigators from the North Rhine-Westphalia police force are planning to interview employees at the retirement home where Boere lives next week. "They are definitely going there," he said.

spiegel.de