A Perth court today set the date for the extradition hearing of Charles Zentai, a Perth pensioner who's wanted over a war crime in Hungary in World War two. If the application succeeds it will be the first time an Australian citizen is extradited for war crimes.

Transcript
KERRY O'BRIEN: A Perth court today nominated August for the extradition hearing of a Perth pensioner who's wanted over a war crime in Hungary in World War II.

Charles Zentai, who emigrated to Australia in 1950, served in the Nazi-allied Hungarian Army during the war. In 2005, the Hungarian Government applied for his extradition to face a charge of murder over his alleged role in the killing of a 17-year-old Jewish man in 1944.

An appeal to the High Court against the right of the Western Australian magistrates to hear the extradition case was rejected in April. If the application succeeds it will be the first time an Australian citizen is extradited for war crimes.

Mr Zentai and his family claim innocence, but Nazi hunters say the evidence against him is strong.

Hamish Fitzsimmons reports.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: To his family, he's a doting father and grandparent who's tirelessly served the community since emigrating from Hungary after the Second World War.

ERNIE STEINER, CHARLES ZENTAI'S SON: He always had a profile. He was president of the Hungarian Club, he worked for the Western Australian Government, he was a shop owner.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Others see this 87-year-old pensioner as an alleged war criminal who must be brought to justice.

EFRAIM ZUROFF, SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTRE: There are other people perhaps committed greater crimes who are not on the "most wanted" list but our chances of them are basically zero.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: In 1944, as the war entered its final phase, Hungary was still an ally of Nazi Germany. As Soviet armies advanced across Eastern Europe, the fascist Arrow Cross Party started rounding up Hungarian Jews.

CHARLES ZENTAI, ACCUSED: As a soldier I just had to carry out orders and, but none of those orders I was given had anything to do with rounding up Jews or torturing them or anything like that.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Charles Zentai was one of thousands who fled the Russian advance and ended up in Australia as a refugee.

In 1947 Hungary's new communist government charged the former army officer in his absence with the murder of Peter Balazs, a 17-year-old Jewish youth.

EFRAIM ZUROFF: They very clearly identify Charles Zentai as the person, one of the people who carried out the murder and the person who threw the body of Peter Balasz into Danube.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: It's alleged that on 8 November,1944 Charles Zentai took Peter Balasz off a tram and to an army barracks where he was eventually beaten to death.

Hungary wants Charles Zentai to stand trial for the murder but he's fighting an extradition application and maintaining his innocence.

(to Charles Zentai)

Were you involved in the rounding up and beating of Jewish people in Hungary?

CHARLES ZENTAI: Of course not, no, I was not.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Were you involved in the murder of Peter Balasz?

CHARLES ZENTAI: Definitely not. I'm innocent of that accusation.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Why are you being so vigorously pursued?

CHARLES ZENTAI: Well, it's only Mr Zuroff could give you an answer for that.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Efraim Zuroff runs the Simon Wisenthal Centre in Jerusalem, which is running Operation Last Chance, a campaign to bring any remaining Nazi criminals to justice. He's been driving the case against Charles Zentai.

EFRAIM ZUROFF: When Mr Zentai was exposed by us, the first thing he said, "I'm willing to go back to Hungary to clear my name." So please, go right ahead.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: The bulk of the evidence against Charles Zentai comes from the trials of two Hungarian army officers, Bela Mader and Lajos Nagy, who were convicted of the crime in 1947. Mader was sentenced to life with hard labour but released in 1956. Nagy was executed. Both pointed the finger at Charles Zentai.

(to Charles Zentai)

Was this man known to you at all, Peter Balasz?

CHARLES ZENTAI: Not at all, I didn't know him.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Why do you think the accusations were made against you in 1947 by these other officers?

CHARLES ZENTAI: Well, I can only think of their circumstances, the nature of their interrogation by a real sadist interrogators and the area they were kept in a couple of years. And the beatings they had to suffer every time they refused to sign a prepared confession.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Charles Zentai's son, Ernie Steiner, has been back and forth to Hungary gathering evidence to support his father's defence. He claims the officers' confessions can't be trusted as they were made after months of torture in the notorious secret police headquarters in Budapest which is now a museum to the terrors of the communist regime.

ERNIE STEINER: They were admissions made under duress in that prison in the basement of this building carved out of lime stone where there's a drain in the floor of one of the rooms to take the blood away, where there's a hangman's noose only metres away from the interrogation room. I mean this is an aspect of history that Australians are unaware of.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Mr Zentai maintains he left Budapest under orders on 7 November 1944, the day before Peter Balasz was murdered.

CHARLES ZENTAI: It was my decision, I was in conscripted soldier and the order was given and we had to move. There's no questions asked.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: What date did you leave?

CHARLES ZENTAI: Well, you asking me Hungary or the barracks.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: What date did you leave the barracks?

CHARLES ZENTAI: The barracks I left on 7 November 1944.

MARK AARONS, AUTHOR: It's a fairly common way in which people in my experience who are accused of war crimes behave.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Mark Aarons has written extensive on war criminals who have used Australia as a safe haven since World War II.

He believes the testimony given by the convicted men which claims Charles Zentai was in Budapest on the day of the murder was sufficient if the case to go to court.

MARK AARONS: The question will ultimately be, "Will our legal system and ultimately the Minister for Home Affairs, who must approve any proposed extradition, be prepared to accept that evidence that was taken a long time ago and that can't be tested by way of cross examination is of a sufficient standard to warrant the signing of an extradition order?"

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Charles Zentai has been fighting extradition to Hungary since 2005. Today the Perth Magistrates Court began the process after Mr Zentai's appeal against extradition was rejected by the High Court in April.

But there's criticism the case is dragging on.

EFRAIM ZUROFF: It's a shame that legal challenge had absolutely nothing to do with the case, enabled the delay of more than two years in a case of a suspect who is in his 80s. So, you know, ultimately that might create a situation whereby he cannot be brought to trial, which would be definitely a travesty of justice.

MARK AARONS: It's a very sad reflection on Australia's justice system that it has taken the activities of a foreign organisation, the Simon Wisenthal Centre to put the case into the public arena, and the activity of a foreign government to seek an extradition request before anything kicks in the Australian justice system.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Charles Zentai and his family say regardless of the outcome of the extradition hearing his life has already been ruined by the allegations.

ERNIE STEINER: Really for an innocent man to have to go through this whole process is really a bizarre scenario, really how far this thing has gone.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: So you're that convinced that your father is innocent?

ERNIE STEINER: I'm totally convinced he's innocent, yes.

CHARLES ZENTAI: It's a complete ruination of my old age, the last few years of my life have been completely ruined and on top of it all, the pressure and what it creates and the, well, for my family, that's what concerns me the most.

KERRY O'BRIEN: And that hearing will take place in August. That report from Hamish Fitzsimmons.

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