The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre has given Hungary, along with a dozen countries, a fail grade in bringing former Nazis to justice.

Assessing the period from April 2009 to March 2010, Efraim Zuroff, head of the center's Israel office, criticised the country for its failure to imprison Sandor Kepiro, a suspected WWII criminal.

Kepiro, 96, a former Hungarian gendarme, was accused of having ordered his patrol to shoot four civilians to death on January 23, 1942, during what had gone down to history as "the massacre of Novi Sad".

The massacre took place over three days. Hungarian forces rounded up over 1,000 people, mainly Serbians, Jews and Gypsies, in the city and mowed them down with machine-gun fire on the shores of the Danube.

Kepiro, who was convicted in 1944 for a mass murder of civilians, escaped to Argentina after the war but was exposed by the Wiesenthal Centre as living in Budapest in 2006.

Kepiro denies the charge, saying he has never killed anyone.

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