BUDAPEST -- The war crimes trial of 96-year-old Sandor Kepiro
will begin in Budapest on Thursday, it has been announced.
Kepiro, a member of the occupying Hungarian
fascist forces in Serbia during the Second
World War, is charged in connection to mass
killings of Serbs, Jews and Roma in early
1942.
The massacre, known as the Novi Sad Raid, saw the rounding up and killings of
at least 1,200 residents of Novi Sad, north of
Belgrade.
New research,
however, puts the number of victims - murdered
in the space of two days in January of that year
- at more than 4,000.
Serbia's War
Crimes Prosecution in 2008 opened its investigation
against Kepiro, but in the meantime decided to
hand it over the the Hungarian judiciary.
Kepiro was
on the list of top five most wanted fugitive
WW2 fascists, put together by Jerusalem's Simon
Wiesenthal Center.
Kepiro was
found guilty and sentenced twice to ten, and
then 14 years in prison, but escaped to Argentina
and never served a day in prison.
He returned
to Hungary several years ago.
The killings
of Serb, Jewish and Roma civilians in northern
Serbia in the winter of 1942 extended beyond
Novi Sad, to the town of Bečej and the Šajkačka
District, with the total number of victims put
at between 4,000 and 12,000. Many among them
were women, children and elderly.
In Novi Sad,
they were rounded up and murdered on the banks
of the frozen Danube River, after which their
killers threw their bodies into the water.
Kepiro is
also suspected of taking part in deportations
of Novi Sad's Jews to the Auschwitz death camp
in 1944.
Witnesses
claim that he was a captain in the occupying
Hungarian Gendarmerie forces, but Kepiro denied
his involvement in the crimes, saying he was "nowhere near the killings", and describing himself as "the only one who objected to orders".
b92.net
|