Perth pensioner Charles Zentai has won his appeal against his extradition to Hungary to face questioning about the 1944 murder of a Jewish teenager in Budapest.

The 88-year-old was appealing the decision made by the Minister for Home Affairs, Brendan O’Connor.

The 88-year-old was appealing the decision made by the Minister for Home Affairs, Brendan O’Connor.

Zentai’s son,Ernie Steiner told J-Wire: “I am grateful that in Australia the court system is independent of the government.” He said that his father was not in the best of health having suffered a stroke and a few broken ribs.

In 1944, 18-year-old Peter Balazs was pulled off a Budapest tram and dragged to military barracks where he was beaten to death by three men in front of other prisoners. His body was then dumped in the Danube. Hungarian authorities had wanted to question Zentai about the murder and requested his extradition to Budapest…an extradition which was granted by the Federal Government.

But Steiner told J-Wire: “Today in court, we completed a long battle in which truth has prevailed. The beginnings of the story were inaccurate. Today was really the first time we had to let the court know our side of the argument.”

He added: “This is the happiest day of my life. As I talk to you I am looking at the smile on my father’s face.”

But the reaction at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem was quite different. Executive Director Dr Efraim Zuroff told J-Wire: “It;s a disgusting and outrageous decision but quite believable. Australia is the only Western Anglo-Saxon country not to have convicted a Nazi war criminal. In 1986, the Robert Menzies Review named 70 Nazi war criminals resident in Australia who should be investigated. Not one case has reached a positive conclusion.”

Zentai appeared in Perth’s Federal Court where Justice Neil McKerracher ruled that the Federal Government did not have the power to extradite Zentai stating that the war crime charge did not exist in Hungary at the time of Balazs’s murder.

jwire.com.au