One of the last Nazi war crimes trials opened in Budapest on Thursday. The 97-year-old
Hungarian, Sandor Kepiro, professed his innocence despite
topping the Simon Wiesenthal Center's most-wanted list for
Nazi criminals.
The trial of one of the world's most-wanted World War II war crimes suspects
opened in Budapest on Thursday. Sandor Kepiro,
a former Hungarian military officer who is
accused of complicity in the murder of more
than 1,200 Serbian and Jewish civilians in
a massacre in Serbia in 1942, proclaimed his
innocence.
"I have never been a murderer," he said before the trial.
"I
was there in the raid, but all we did was
ask for papers. The murders happened in a
completely separate location, by the Danube.
I wasn't anywhere near them."
In court
on Thursday, the 97-year-old also called the
trial a "circus" based on "lies."
Kepiro
is one of the last surviving suspects listed
by the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center.
The center's Jerusalem director, Efraim Zuroff,
tracked Kepiro down in Budapest. He had been
living there in obscurity since 1996 after
decades spent in Argentina.
Kepiro has already been convicted twice for his role in the massacre, but has
never been punished. A Hungarian court sentenced
him to ten years in prison in 1944, but that
sentence was overturned by the Nazi-backed
fascist regime that took power in the waning
days of WWII.
Trial important for Hungary
He was
convicted again by the communist government
in 1946, this time in absentia because he
fled to Argentina. Wiesenthal's Zuroff believes
the trial not only finally holds him to account,
it is also an important step for Hungary.
"It
can help teach Hungarian society about the
role of Hungarians in Holocaust crimes, help
them confront that reality honestly," he told Deutsche Welle.
"It
also sends a message of the dangers of hate,
anti-semitism and racism and that's a lesson
that, given the rise of the right-wing in
Hungary today and the problems with the Roma,
is also important," he added.
During
the Novi Sad massacre of 1942 over 1,200 Jews,
Serbs and Roma were killed in reprisals. Novi
Sad is now in northern Serbia, but was then
occupied jointly by Hungarian and German forces.
Kepiro had sued Zuroff for libel. But in a verdict on Tuesday the judge of the
Pest Central District Court said that Zuroff "had grounds and acted in good faith when he accused the former gendarmerie captain
Sandor K. of war crimes."
Hungary
criticized for lack of interest in trial
Meanwhile,
journalists in Hungary and Serbia have criticized
the Hungarian government for being almost
indifferent to the case.
"It
[the trial] is being covered in independent
publications, but they are largely confined
to the internet," Gabor Bodis, a TV journalist in Budapest, told Deutsche Welle.
"They
previewed it, but it will be interesting to
see how the government-friendly media and
those even more to the right than Viktor Orban's
government cover it," he added.
Bodis
claims the Hungarian justice system is very
slow and he, along with some of his colleagues
believes the Hungarian government was not
bending over backwards to bring Kepiro to
trial.
"So,
it's only logical that it was expected that
nature would take its course, and that, therefore,
no court would have to deal with whether he
is guilty or not," Zuzana Serences, a journalist from Novi Sad, where the massacre took place,
told Deutsche Welle.
Zuroff,
however, said the fact that a Hungarian court
acquitted him of libel charges brought by
Kepiro, while emphasizing the importance of
the work the Wiesenthal Center does, was encouraging. dw-world.de
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