BELGRADE, Serbia: World War II archives in Belgrade and assistance from Serbian
authorities are essential to efforts to prosecute a Hungarian
man and two Croats believed responsible for wartime killings
of thousands of Jews, Serbs and others, a Nazi hunter said
Thursday.
Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center spoke after meeting with President
Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica about the
Center's "Operation: Last Chance," aimed at bringing to justice hundreds of Nazi war crimes suspects still alive.
Zuroff said the Serbian leaders pledged
to provide documents and contact witnesses relevant for the
WWII atrocities during the Nazi occupation of the former
Yugoslavia. The atrocities included the so-called Great Raid
of 1942, when some 800 Jews and 400 Serbs were rounded up,
shot and drowned in the freezing Danube river in the northern
city of Novi Sad.
The area was controlled by pro-Nazi
Hungarians at the time. Zuroff said one of those allegedly
responsible was Sandor Kepiro, now 93. Kepiro, who was a
gendarmerie lieutenant in Novi Sad at the time, migrated
to Argentina after the war but returned to Hungary in 1996.
Hungarian prosecutors recently opened
an investigation into Kepiro following demands by the Wiesenthal
Center and after researchers in Belgrade found a copy of
a 1944 Hungarian court verdict that found him guilty of disloyalty
to Hungary.
"The criminal investigation has finally begun. Kepiro should be convicted and
justice finally achieved," Zuroff said. But he warned that time may be running out due to Kepiro's age.
Kepiro has denied the accusations, saying he was a scapegoat in a show trial.
Last month, the Budapest Municipal
Court said the 1944 ruling sentencing Kepiro to 10 years
in prison could not be enforced because a retrial shortly
afterward annulled the sentence.
"It is important to get
this guy into court ... and send him where he belongs," Zuroff said, adding he expects "many more relevant documents" from the Belgrade-based Museum of Genocide "which contains invaluable papers and evidence" about WWII atrocities in the Balkans.
During a previous visit, Zuroff criticized
Serbian officials for not doing enough about Kepiro and two
other Nazi-era suspects — Croatians Milivoj Asner and Ivo
Rojnica.
Asner and Rojnica are accused of being
involved in atrocities during Croatia's wartime Nazi puppet
regime, which persecuted tens of thousands of Jews, Gypsies
and Serbs.
Kostunica said in a statement that
Serbia's judiciary will "do everything to gather evidence and (enable) access to witnesses" in the three cases.
Rojnica is believed to be living in
Argentina while Asner is in Austria, where authorities recently
said he was unfit to stand trial.
Serbia itself stands accused of numerous
atrocities committed during the 1990s breakup of the former
Yugoslavia and remains under Western pressure to hand over
fugitive suspects to a U.N. court.
"We are well aware of problems
facing Serbia at the moment," Zuroff said, but "I am cautiously optimistic that Serbia will become more involved" regarding the case of Kepiro, Asner and Rojnica.
iht.com
|