BUDAPEST, Hungary, Aug. 2 (UPI) -- A local Hungarian court and the not the
government will decide if a suspected Nazi war criminal is
to be extradited to Slovakia, Budapest said this week.
A statement issued by the Hungarian Ministry of Public Administration indicated
that if it receives an extradition request from Slovakia
for war crimes suspect Laszlo Csatary, the Budapest Municipal
Court will make the call.
The 97-year-old Csatary -- accused
of playing a key role in the deportation of thousands of
Jews from Kosice in present-day Slovakia to Nazi death camps
during World War II -- has lived in Hungary since 1997.
Slovakian Minister of Justice Tomas
Borec said in Bratislava that his government wants Csatary
to be tried there and has requested a Slovakian court in
Kosice to contact the Hungarian judiciary with the aim of
putting Csatary on trial on Slovakian soil.
Hungarian officials said they hadn't
received a European arrest warrant for Csatary, but, if they
do, a framework between the countries is in place under which
it would be up to the Budapest court and not government ministries
to carry out an extradition.
Because he is already under arrest
in Hungary, the Budapest court "may refuse to carry out the European arrest warrant and surrender the suspect
if criminal proceedings based on the same grounds are also
under way in Hungary," the statement said.
Csatary, who has been under house
arrest since July 18, was interrogated Tuesday by prosecutors,
to whom he denied having anything to do with war crimes,
his attorney said.
Attorney Horvath Gabor said Csatary
was questioned for 3 hours and categorically refuted the
charges, saying he wasn't the police commander for the Jewish
ghetto in Kosice during the war and that he has been the
victim of a case of mistaken identity, the Hungarian news
agency MTI reported.
Pressure mounted on the Hungarian
government to arrest Csatary since the publication of an
expose in the British tabloid The Sun last week portraying
him as living openly in the country following his 1997 flight
from Canada, where he was set be expelled as a suspected
war criminal.
Hungarian prosecutors began investigating
Csatary last year after they were given evidence by the Nazi-hunting
Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem.
Jewish investigators contend that
in 1944 Csatary played a key role as the ghetto commander
responsible for the deportation of approximately 15,700 Jews
from Kosice -- the second largest city in modern-day Slovakia
-- to the Auschwitz death camp.
They also allege that in 1941 Csatary
played a role in the deportation of around 300 Jews from
Kosice to Kamyanets-Podilsky in Ukraine, where that summer
almost all of them were killed in a mass murder of 23,600
mostly Hungarian Jews -- one of the first instances of the
Nazis' "final solution" that led to the Holocaust.
Csatary was tried in absentia and
sentenced to death by a Czechoslovakian court in 1948.
Hungary last year was scene of high-profile
trial of accused Nazi war criminal and former police Capt.
Sandor Kepiro, who was acquitted on charges of helping carry
out a World War II massacre of Serbian and Jewish civilians
in northern Yugoslavia.
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