BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Slovakia's justice minister has asked a court to seek
the extradition of a 97-year-old Hungarian man found guilty
in absentia in 1948 of whipping or torturing Jews and helping
to deport them to the Auschwitz death camp during World War
Two.
Laszlo Csatary, named by Nazi hunters from the Simon Wiesenthal Center as their
most wanted war crimes suspect, was a police commander in
the eastern Slovak city of Kosice during the war. He has
denied any guilt.
Hungarian authorities arrested Csatary and put him under house arrest in Budapest
earlier this month after he had spent decades on the run.
"We have one of the last chances to punish World War Two crimes," Slovak Justice Minister Tomas Borec told reporters on Monday. "I have a personal interest that Laszlo Csatary, after a detailed and swift study
of all factors by a relevant Slovak court, is extradited
to Slovakia and goes to jail," he said.
Borec said a court in Kosice had been
asked to handle Csatary's case.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center said it
had provided Hungary with evidence that Csatary helped to
organize the deportation of around 16,000 Jews to the Auschwitz
death camp in Poland from Kosice, which became part of Hungary
in 1938 and was returned to Czechoslovakia after the end
of the war.
According to a Czechoslovak court
ruling from June 8, 1948, posted on the internet by the Slovak
justice ministry, Csatary was found guilty of deportations
to Nazi death camps, and unlawfully whipping, torturing or
killing people in 1944, and was sentenced to death in absentia.
Czechoslovakia abolished the death
penalty in 1990, three years before its division into Slovakia
and the Czech Republic, and Slovak Justice Ministry State
Secretary Monika Jankovska said Csatary's sentence would
presumably be changed to life imprisonment if he were extradited
from Hungary.
Slovakia's Central Union of Jewish
Communities called on Slovak officials last week to seek
Csatary's extradition. chicagotribune.com
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