(Reuters) - Nazi-hunters from the Simon Wiesenthal Center have named 95-year-old
Hungarian Laszlo Csatary as their most wanted war crimes
suspect and have asked Hungary to prosecute him, an expert
at the center said on Friday.
In its annual report this week, the center said that Csatary, who is accused
of helping organise the deportation of about 15,700 Jews
to the Auschwitz death camp from the Slovakian city of Kosice
in 1944, had returned to Hungary from Canada.
Csatary was the commander of police
in Kosice, which was part of Hungary, during World War Two.
The center said he had escaped to Canada after the war only
to be stripped of his Canadian citizenship in 1997.
On Friday, Efraim Zuroff, the Israel
Director of the Wiesenthal Center, told Reuters a person
in Hungary who wished to remain anonymous had tipped it off
about Csatary's whereabouts via email.
"We know where Csatary
is and the information was given to the Hungarian prosecutors...
he's in very good health as we know," Zuroff said in a telephone interview.
"We are waiting to see
what happens," he added.
Gabriella Skoda, a spokeswoman for
the Budapest Prosecutors' Office, confirmed in a statement
that a war crimes investigation had been launched in September
2011, based on a report from Zuroff. But she did not name
a suspect in the statement.
"In the investigation we
collect data related to the content of the report," the statement said. "The prosecutors have so far not heard anybody as a suspect in the case."
Since his precise whereabouts in Hungary
remain unknown, it was not possible to contact Csatary for
comment. He has not spoken to the media or responded to the
allegations against him in the past.
The Wiesenthal Center has spotted
several World War Two war crimes suspects in the last decade
in its Operation Last Chance.
After a German court convicted John
Demjanjuk, a former Nazi guard last year, the Center launched
a second phase of the Operation, offering a 25,000 euro ($32,900)
reward for information leading to the prosecution or punishment
of war criminals.
Demjanjuk died in a care home at the
age of 91 last month.
Another suspect, former Hungarian
gendarme officer Sandor Kepiro, died at 97 in September in
Budapest after a court cleared him of involvement in killing
more than 1,000 civilians in the Serb city of Novi Sad in
1942. uk.reuters.com
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