A 97-YEAR-OLD Hungarian described as the world’s most wanted surviving Nazi war criminal has denied responsibility for a massacre of civilians in Serbia in 1942.
Former police captain Sandor Kepiro hobbled slowly into a Budapest courtroom yesterday to answer charges that men under his command murdered 36 of some 1,200 Serbs and Jews who were killed during raids by Nazi-allied Hungarian forces on the town of Novi Sad.
“I am innocent and I am here on trumped-up charges. This trial is a terrible thing. There is no basis to this, everything is based on lies,” Mr Kepiro said, insisting that though he had helped round up prisoners he had no idea that his superiors intended to execute them.
“I knew nothing of the massacres. The soldiers told me nothing. This is a circus,” said Mr Kepiro, who entered court with assistance and carrying a printed piece of paper which read: “Murderers! Murderers of a 97-year-old man!”
He told the court that when the executions had begun – with many victims being shot and thrown into the Danube river – he had been “the only person to refuse the order to use firearms”.
Mr Kepiro also claimed to have saved the lives of a Jewish family who were about to be shot by a Hungarian army officer and his men. “I told him and his band to get lost and I said to the family: ‘You’re free’.”
A Hungarian court convicted Mr Kepiro of involvement in the atrocity in 1944, but he was released shortly afterwards.
He was tried again in 1946 and sentenced to 14 years in prison by Hungary’s postwar communist authorities, but avoided jail by fleeing to Argentina, where he lived for almost 50 years and is believed to have worked as a farmer and in the textile industry.
He is thought to have returned in 1996 to Budapest, where a decade later he was found living near one of the city’s synagogues by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, an organisation founded by Holocaust survivors to hunt down Nazi fugitives.
The organisation put Mr Kepiro at the top of its list of wanted Nazis and for several years strongly criticised Budapest for failing to prosecute him.
Efraim Zuroff, head of the Wiesenthal Centre’s Jerusalem office, said it was “clear that this is one of the last major trials” of Nazi war crimes suspects.
“I am thankful to God that Kepiro is alive today. My sense is that were hoping that we would die and spare Hungary this embarrassment,” he added. “This is the first trial of a Hungarian war criminal and since Hungary has collaborated with Nazi Germany, it’s very important it takes place . . . there can be no clemency, no sympathy and no ignoring of the facts.”
A verdict in the trial is expected as soon as May 19th. Mr Kepiro faces a life sentence if found guilty.