BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Sandor Kepiro, a former officer in a Hungarian special
security force who was recently acquitted of Holocaust-era
war crimes charges, died Saturday. He was 97.
Kepiro died at a hospital in Budapest, his lawyer Zsolt Zetenyi said. He said
doctors did not provide a cause of death.
"Doctors
said he was suffering from 'general weakening,'
and I am convinced the trial contributed significantly
to the worsening of his health," Zetenyi told The Associated Press. "His condition was continually deteriorating."
Charges
that Kepiro, a former gendarmerie captain,
was responsible for the deaths of 36 people
in northern Serbia during World War II were
dismissed in July by a Budapest court because
of insufficient evidence.
Zetenyi
had appealed the ruling, saying that it did
not go far enough in clearing Kepiro. The
prosecution also appealed, calling the acquittal
by a panel of three judges "unfounded."
The
charges stemmed from Kepiro's participation
in a raid by Hungarian forces on the northern
Serbian town of Novi Sad in January 1942 in
which more than 1,200 civilians were killed.
Kepiro
acknowledged participating in the raids, which
were part of a crackdown on partisan activity
in the region, but he maintained that his
role was only to supervise the identities
of those being rounded up and denied knowing
about the massacre until later.
Many
of those killed, mostly Jews and Serbs, were
shot and their bodies dumped into the Danube
River.
Kepiro,
once at the top of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's
most-wanted war criminals list, returned to
Hungary in May 1996 after living for decades
in Argentina. Hungarian authorities reopened
Kepiro's case after his whereabouts were uncovered
in 2006 by Efraim Zuroff, the Wiesenthal Center's
chief Nazi hunter.
"I
am innocent and need to be acquitted," Kepiro told the AP in February, after prosecutors announced his indictment. "I am bedridden and can't leave my home. I have nothing."
In 1944,
Kepiro was sentenced to 10 years in prison
by a Hungarian military court for charges
stemming from the Novi Sad raids, but the
verdict was annulled after the occupation
of Hungary by the Nazis later that year. Kepiro
said he was a scapegoat in a show trial meant
to exonerate his superiors.
Kepiro
was born Feb. 18, 1914, and earned a law degree
in Hungary in 1937. He went to Austria after
World War II and later emigrated to Argentina,
where he worked in the textile industry.
Funeral
details were pending. Kepiro was divorced
and is survived by two children.
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