ALEXANDER Downer has asserted the historical moral superiority of the Coalition over Labor. He now has an opportunity to demonstrate this and salvage Australia's honour by dealing openly and expeditiously with the request for the extradition of alleged Hungarian war criminal Karoly (Charles) Zentai.

The case against Zentai has become too strong to ignore. The evidence implicates him in the killing of a Jewish civilian during the Nazi occupation of Hungary in 1944 and strongly suggests that he took part in the systematic persecution of Jews.

First, there are the statements made by witnesses at the end of World War II that place Zentai in a Nazi-controlled Hungarian military unit in 1944.

This was uncovered by Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and implicates Zentai in the kidnapping, beating and torture of a Jewish man, Peter Balasz, whose body was thrown into the Danube. Zuroff claims the evidence was heard in a Hungarian court in 1947 during the trial of Zentai's two co-accused, but Zentai had by then left Hungary and was saved from extradition because of US reluctance to send him to face a communist-controlled court.

Then there is the demolition of Zentai's alibi. Like many accused war criminals who illegally entered Australia, Zentai claims to have been far from the crime scene, having left Budapest on November 7, 1944 - the day before Balasz's murder.

This alibi collapsed when it was shown that in his 1957 application for Australian citizenship, Zentai had stated that his flight from Budapest occurred four months later. He was there at the time Balasz was killed. So it seems 11 witnesses were not mistaken.

Finally, evidence has more recently emerged during The Australian's investigation that Zentai was involved in the systematic rounding up, beating and torturing of Jews in Budapest in late 1944. This corroborates the testimony of Jakob Mermelstein, who made the same claim to The Weekend Australian in May.

The latest evidence comes from the Hungarian archives of the 1947 trial and indicates the growing strength of the case against Zentai, including descriptions of the terrible beatings that Balasz suffered at his hands.

The Hungarian Government lodged an extradition request on March 30, but there is little sign of action by Justice Minister Chris Ellison. This is consistent with the malaise that infected governments from Chifley through the Menzies, Holt, Gorton, McMahon, Whitlam and Fraser years.

It was only in 1986 that Bob Hawke acted to rectify this unhappy state of affairs and launched investigations that confirmed one of Australia's worst-kept secrets: hundreds of Nazis made Australia home, which was widely known in our immigration and intelligence services.

Indeed, this knowledge went all the way to cabinet, yet a blind eye was turned to the killers who had taken out citizenship. The record shows that several Nazis were on the payroll of US intelligence before they worked for the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation.

Hawke's efforts were abandoned in 1991 by the Keating government. Since 1996 the Howard Government has adopted a policy of stonewalling the claims against a string of men, of whom Zentai is the latest and perhaps last.

The last Nazis are likely to die peacefully in Perth or Melbourne, having never faced a court. This would be tragic, especially as efforts continue in countries that also accepted Nazis, especially in Canada and the US. These nations are still prosecuting war criminals, stripping their illegally obtained citizenship and throwing them out.

The evidence indicates that monsters from more recent conflicts are also hiding in Australia, yet very little, if any, effort is expended by the federal Government in investigating these allegations.

The first step is to determine the extradition request concerning Zentai. The second is to devote proper resources to investigate charges against Cambodians, Afghans, Serbs, Croats and Chileans who, like Zentai, stand accused of crimes against humanity.

Our justice system demands this. Serious crimes have been committed; the accused live in Australia; we have a legal duty to investigate and, if the evidence warrants it, to extradite or prosecute the accused.

Mark Aarons is the author of Sanctuary: Nazi Fugitives in Australia.

The Australian, June 27, 2005