Prosecution, defence lodge appeals against verdict on 97-year-old war crimes suspect

The 97-year-old former policeman Sándor Képíró was acquitted of war crimes charges on Monday in what may well be one of the last attempts to bring a Nazi-era suspect to justice. Képíró was wheeled into court with an IV drip in his arm and a blanket on his knees having spent the past week in hospital. “I am innocent, I never killed or stole, I served my country, I came back because for me there is no life outside Hungary,” he said through a nurse before the verdict was read out.

Documents ‘unreliable’

Presiding Judge Béla Varga told the court that Képíró was acquitted due to a lack of evidence. In particular, documents relating to two trials from the 1940s were declared inadmissible. Furthermore, some witness testimony was deemed unreliable. One elderly woman claimed to have seen Képíró beat a child with a rifle. Varga said police involved in the Novi Sad raid carried pistols, not rifles, so her testimony was doubtful.

Appeals by both sides

Prosecutor Zsolt Falvai had called during the trial, which began on 5 May, for a prison sentence despite Képíró’s advanced age. He said on Tuesday that the court’s verdict was “unfounded” and lodged an appeal. Defence lawyer Zsolt Zétényi lodged an appeal on Képíró’s behalf the following day. He argued that Képíró should be declared innocent, not merely acquitted for lack of evidence. The Simon Wiesenthal Center described Képíró’s acquittal as an “outrageous miscarriage of justice that insults the memory of the 1,246 victims of the Novi Sad massacre”.

Charges in case

Képíró faced charges of complicity in the rounding up and execution of some three dozen civilians as the captain of an armed police unit in northern Yugoslavia – now Serbia – in 1942. Over a thousand were killed in the raid between 21 and 23 January that claimed over 1,000 civilian lives that year, part of a series of reprisal killings that became known as the Novi Sad massacre. Hungary was allied to Hitler’s Germany at the time and took part in the occupation of its southern neighbour, northern Serbia having once been Hungarian territory.
Képíró had been found guilty by a Hungarian court in 1944. However, his ten-year sentence was promptly quashed after Germany invaded Hungary and installed a puppet fascist government. He was retried in absentia by another court and another guilty verdict was issued in 1948. By that time Hungary was under the sphere of influence of the USSR and Képíró had absconded to Argentina.
He returned to Hungary in 1996 and lived in obscurity for ten years before being exposed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s chief Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff in 2006. He topped the organisation’s most-wanted list in its “Operation Last Chance” – a bid to get the last few Nazi-era war crimes suspects into court.
The reading of the verdict and the court’s explanation of it was spread out over two days because of Képíró’s poor health. The trial had already been stalled for over a week while he underwent medical and psychiatric tests after the prosecution expressed doubts over his ability to understand what was going on. The defendant was declared compos mentis and fit to face trial but only for a maximum of two 45-minute sessions a day. After the verdict was read out he was taken back to hospital. He did not attend court on Tuesday.

budapesttimes.hu