The international "nazi hunter" who pursued Charles Zentai for more than five years has called on Hungary to mount a renewed and urgent bid to extradite the Willetton grandfather.

The move came as Mr Zentai's lawyer, high-profile Perth QC Malcolm McCusker, attacked the Federal Government's handling of the case, saying it was "chilling" to think it could disregard the rights of an Australian citizen simply for the sake of international courtesy.

"I am very disappointed and really quite horrified in the way the Australian Government has dealt with it," Mr McCusker said.

"The Holocaust was a horrifying event and a blot of humankind but you can't swing from that to say, 'we will now override the ordinary presumption of innocence and override the rights of Australian citizens'."

Mr Zentai won a partial victory on Friday when the Federal Court ruled that an Australian order to extradite him for an alleged war crime was invalid because of errors of law and because it had failed to take into account humanitarian grounds, including the 88-year-old's declining health.

The decision made international headlines and was a severe blow to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre which was in the midst of a global campaign to track down the last surviving war criminals and which saw Mr Zentai as its last chance to secure an Australian suspect.

Its Jerusalem-based head, Dr Efraim Zuroff, sparked the pursuit of Mr Zentai in 2005 and said the court's decision was a damning indictment of Australia and an insult to Hungary.

Dr Zuroff said he had already sought legal advice on necessary steps to get Mr Zentai before a Hungarian military court.

Mr McCusker, who took the case pro bono after Mr Zentai spent his life savings on lawyers, described the case as "an outrageous injustice".

"He's an Australian citizen and has been for the last 58 years," he said. "He is of frail health, very poor health. The question still is: is there evidence on which, in a fair trial, this man could be convicted? And the answer is clearly no."

He added that Mr Zentai would forever be branded a war criminal.

"I, along with most right thinking people, would say nazi criminals should be brought to justice. But I think Dr Zuroff's over-zealous pursuit can result in an injustice and he doesn't seem to care," Mr McCusker said.

"I think there is a high degree of understandable emotion when questions of war criminals are raised.

"To be charitable about it, I think that the minister has simply followed the dictates of his advisers in the department and the judge has said that the advice, in a number of respects, was incorrect."

au.news.yahoo.com