A 97-year old Hungarian man protested his innocence yesterday
as his war crimes trial began for the 1942 killings of
civilians in Serbia.
Sandor Kepiro, a former gendarmerie captain, is accused of
taking part in raids by Hungarian forces in the northern
Serbian town of Novi Sad in January 1942, in which around
1,200 civilians were killed.
According to court papers, unidentified members of a patrol
under Kepiro's command killed four people during one of the
raids. Kepiro is also suspected of being involved in the
deaths of around 30 others who were executed on the banks
of the Danube River.
Serbia's war crime prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic, and representatives of the
Simon Wiesenthal Center attended the start of
the trial.
‘This is a clear example that even after 70 years of a crime being committed
... a perpetrator can be brought to justice,’
Vukcevic said in a courtroom interview. ‘Justice
is being served today.’
Kepiro, who returned to Budapest in 1996 after
living for decades in Argentina, acknowledged
that he participated in the raids but denied
any responsibility for the killings.
I am innocent and I am here on trumped-up charges,’ Kepiro said in court. ‘This
trial is a terrible thing. There is no basis
to this, everything is based on lies.’
For Efraim Zuroff, the head of the Wiesenthal
Center's Jerusalem office, who brought Kepiro's
case to light, the court hearing was ‘a very
emotional experience’.
‘It's clear that this is one of the last major
trials of Holocaust-era war criminal suspects,’
he said.
‘I am thankful to God that Kepiro is alive today. My sense is that (Hungarian
authorities) were hoping that we would die and
spare Hungary this embarrassment.'
Kepiro,
though looking very frail and needing assistance
to walk, said he felt physically and mentally
fit to stand trial.
He sat in
court with a sign ‘murderers of a 97-year-old
man’ on his lap. He said he was being put on
trial ‘because I am the last survivor. Everyone
else who was there is dead.’
Due to his poor hearing, an assistant repeated
all questions from Judge Bela Varga and other
court officials into Kepiro's ear and the session
was interrupted by recesses when Kepiro said
he felt too tired to continue with his testimony.
During World War II, Hungarian forces entered northern Serbia, which had been
part of Hungary until World War I, and in early
1942 carried out raids to counter the growing
number of partisan attacks.
Kepiro said that his task was to supervise the
identification of people being rounded up, but
he said he was unaware of the killings until
after they had been carried out. About 800 Serbs
and 400 Jews are thought to have been killed
in the raids.
Kepiro told the court he had intervened to save
the lives of a Serbian-Jewish family who owned
a hotel in Novi Sad and were about to be taken
by Hungarian soldiers to be shot.
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