Hungary's Sandor Kepiro, until recently the world's most wanted Nazi war crimes
suspect, died Saturday in Budapest aged 97, said his family,
cited by the Hungarian news agency MTI.
Kepiro was suspected of ordering the execution
of over 30 Jews and Serbs in the Serbian
town of Novi Sad in January 1942, but was
cleared in July by a Budapest court.
Until his trial, the former Hungarian gendarmerie captain had topped the Simon
Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi
war criminals.
The court in Budapest however freed him on July 18 following a two-month trial
that rested heavily on evidence from old documents
and testimonies.
The
prosecution, which had demanded at least a
prison sentence, later said it would appeal
the court's verdict.
Kepiro had already been found guilty of the crimes in Novi Sad twice in the 1940s
but avoided prison by fleeing to Argentina
in 1944, where he remained for half a century
before returning to Budapest in 1996, where
he was tracked down by Nazi hunter Efraim
Zuroff.
Visibly
weakened at his trial, Kepiro, who always
insisted on his innocence, had been in hospital
since July.
ynetnews.com
Read this article in Hebrew ynet.co.il
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