THE federal government has told the High Court it should be allowed to extradite
a man accused of war crimes to Hungary, despite war crimes
not being an offence in Hungary at the time of the man's
alleged actions.
Charles Zentai, of Perth, is accused of beating a Jewish teenager to death and
throwing his body in the Danube river in Nazi-occupied Budapest
in November 1944.
In 2009, the then home affairs minister
Brendan O'Connor ordered Mr Zentai's extradition to Hungary.
But in 2010 the Federal Court overturned the minister's determination
on the grounds that the offence of which Mr Zentai was suspected,
war crime, did not exist in Hungarian law at the time, as
was required by the extradition treaty between Australia
and Hungary.
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Hungary enacted laws in 1945 which
retrospectively introduced the war crimes offence.
Counsel for the Commonwealth Stephen
Lloyd, SC, told the court yesterday that the important consideration
was whether the conduct of which Mr Zentai is accused was
an offence in law at the time, not whether the offence was
called the same thing then as now. Mr Lloyd said the minister
had confirmed that the actions of Mr Zentai, who was serving
in the Hungarian army at the time, constituted the offence
of murder under 1944 law, and this satisfied the requirements
of the treaty.
''If somebody asks for extradition
[when an offence is retrospective], then what we're required
to do before we can extradite is be satisfied that at the
time there was an offence,'' Mr Lloyd told the court.
In response, Mr Zentai's counsel,
Geoffrey Kennett, SC, said that if Mr Zentai's actions could
have been deemed murder under 1944 law, that offence should
have been listed on the extradition warrant.
He said the treaty was concerned with
the state of law at the time an alleged offence was committed,
not retrospective laws.
''It guards against a person being
… sent overseas to be charged with an offence which wasn't
an offence at the time it was committed,'' Mr Kennett said.
Mr Zentai, 90, who is on bail pending
the High Court decision, is also seeking to have the court
rule that the minister should have issued a statement of
reasons explaining his decision to agree to the extradition.
The court reserved its decision and
will deliver a ruling in coming months.
smh.com.au
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