BUDAPEST (JTA) -- The war crimes trial of a former World
War II gendarmerie officer continued in Hungary, after the
accused was declared medically fit to stand trial.
Sandor Kepiro, 97, a former gendarmerie captain, faces charges regarding war
crimes committed in 1942 in the Serbian city
of Novi Sad.
After
medical tests earlier this week, his trial
began in the Budapest Supreme Court building.
"There
is no obstacle to continue the trial, as there
is no sign of any mental illness. The accused
is responsible or accountable, and able to
understand what is going on during the trial,”
Judge Bela Varga said Thursday, echoing the
opinion of doctors who examined Kepiro on
May 17.
The
judge added that though Kepiro has hearing
problems due to old age, with the help of
hearing aids he is able to follow the trial
without any difficulty. Nevertheless, due
to Kepiro's physical limits, the judge ordered
the trial's court sessions to be shortened.
Each session will be limited to 45 minutes.
During
Thursday’s court session, the judge read the
charges against Kepiro from a post-war trial
in 1948, in which Kepiro was accused of giving
orders to shoot and kill about 30 people on
the banks of the Danube River in the Serbian
town of Novi Sad, on Jan. 23, 1942.
The
prosecutors of the trial, which started at
the beginning of this May in Budapest, charge
Kepiro with taking part in January 1942 raids
by Hungarian forces in the Northern Serbian
town, Novi Sad, in which some 1,200, Serbs,
Gypsies and Jews were killed.
Kepiro
was found guilty of involvement twice; once
by the pre-Nazi Hungarian courts, and again
after the war, in 1946. By then he allegedly
had fled via Austria to Argentina. He returned
to Budapest in 1996, and Efraim Zuroff, head
of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Israel office,
who has been searching for Nazi war criminals
under the center's Operation Last Chance program,
located him.
Kepiro
continues to deny all charges.
The
judge prohibited the taking of photos during
the trial, and also banned the wearing of
any "politically motivated symbols,” including the symbolic black-shirt uniform of
the Hungarian far-right; several of those
shirts were seen in the courtroom on Thursday.
The
trial, which may be one of the last ones against
a perpetrator of World War II war crimes,
continues next week.
A verdict
is expected early in June.
jta.org
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