THE High Court decision this week upholding the power of
state courts to hear extradition cases under federal law
pushes Hungarian Karoly (Charles) Zentai one step closer
to a historic hearing at the scene of his alleged war crimes.
The case against Zentai implicates him in the killing of
a Jewish civilian during the Nazi occupation of Budapest
in 1944 and indicates that he took part in the systematic
persecution of Jews. This reminds us yet again of the 50,000
Australian casualties in the fight against Hitler's criminal
regime, who are among the hundreds of thousands of heroes
we celebrate every year on Anzac Day.
The allegations against Zentai underline this. They include
formal statements of witnesses who place Zentai in a Nazi-controlled
Hungarian military unit in 1944.
They also indicate that Zentai was involved in the kidnapping,
beating and torture of a young Jewish man, Peter Balazs,
whose body was thrown into the Danube, a common occurrence
in the last bloody months of German rule.
This evidence was reportedly first presented to a Hungarian
court in 1947 during the trial of Zentai's co-accused. Zentai
had fled by then and would soon make a new life in Australia.
The Australian's investigation of Zentai in 2005 uncovered
evidence that he had been involved in systematically rounding
up, beating and torturing Jews. The evidence included the
testimony of witness Jakob Mermelstein, as well as documents
from the 1947 trial giving graphic descriptions of the beating
that Balazs suffered, allegedly at Zentai's hands, that left
him virtually unrecognisable.
Like other accused war criminals, Zentai has insisted he
was far away from the scene, claiming he left Budapest on
November 7, 1944, the day before Balazs's murder. However,
the testimony of the witnesses who implicated him in 1947
places him in Budapest at the scene of the crime on November
8, 1944.
The Hungarian Government lodged an extradition request with
Australia on March 30, 2005, but the case has been mired
in highly technical legal arguments, first in the Federal
Court and finally in the High Court, which has returned the
case to the West Australian courts to determine whether Zentai
is eligible for extradition.
Zentai is 86 and has successfully postponed his case for
three years by challenging our legal framework. The wheels
of justice grind exceedingly slowly. Even if a judicial decision
is made expeditiously to extradite him, there are several
avenues of appeal that could take years. So it seems likely
that Zentai will either die in the meantime or, if he is
alive when a judicial decision is made, he could appeal to
the Home Affairs Minister (who will make the final decision),
claiming old age, frailty and illness to avoid extradition.
This unsatisfactory situation results from the indifference
of successive Australian governments towards accused war
criminals, beginning with Chifley in the 1940s and taking
in the Menzies, Holt, Gorton, McMahon, Whitlam and Fraser
years.
In 1986 Bob Hawke finally acted, launching investigations
that confirmed hundreds of Nazis had made Australia home,
which was widely known in the senior echelons of our immigration,
police and intelligence services. Indeed, such knowledge
went all the way up to the office of successive prime ministers,
yet nothing was done to bring to justice the mass killers
of Jews, Gypsies and Slavs, who had also frequently fought
directly against Australia.
To our everlasting shame, Hawke's efforts were abandoned
in 1991 by the Keating government. Then the Howard government
dead-batted many other allegations, leaving Zentai as one
the last cases involving a living suspect. Most others have
evaded justice through the passage of time. As things stand,
Australia is the last refuge for Nazi criminals as major
efforts continue in many Western countries, including Canada,
Italy, Germany and the US.
The Zentai case may be Australia's last chance to demonstrate
that we, too, have used our laws to deliver some belated
justice for the victims of the Holocaust. But this is only
part of the story. The new Labor government has other tests
ahead to cast off the shame of the Keating legacy.
It has been established that there are many monsters in
Australia from recent conflicts, yet virtually nothing has
been done to investigate or bring them to justice. The Rudd
Government should devote adequate resources to investigate
the many charges against Cambodians, Afghanis, Serbs, Croats,
Chileans and Rwandans who, like Zentai, stand accused of
crimes against humanity.
Labor's next test will be the case of Dragan Vasiljkovic,
the Serb paramilitary leader whose role in the Balkans wars
of the 1990s has prompted an extradition request by the Croatian
Government.
As we remember our war heroes today, we should also demand
that our Government pursue a more systematic and determined
approach to accused mass killers whose presence in Australia
demeans our national pride.
theaustralian.news.com.au
|