BUDAPEST/NOVI SAD – A Hungarian court yesterday cleared a 97-year-old man of involvement in the massacre of more than 1,000 civilians in the Serb city of Novi Sad during the second World War, but opponents of the verdict said they would try to overturn it.
“The Budapest Metropolitan Court ... acquits Sandor Kepiro of the war crime charge brought against him,” trial judge Bela Varga said, announcing a ruling which also cleared Mr Kepiro of all related charges. The verdict, greeted with applause by Mr Kepiro’s supporters, is subject to appeal.
Mr Kepiro, a Hungarian national, who was under constant medical surveillance while the verdict was delivered, served as a gendarme during the war, when parts of Serbia were occupied by troops from Hungary, then allied with Nazi Germany.
More than 1,000 civilians – Serbs, Jews and Roma – were killed in the 1942 Novi Sad massacre, ordered in retaliation for attacks by partisans.
The prosecution claimed that Mr Kepiro was involved in a series of events in which people were rounded up and sent to their deaths before a firing squad.
Mr Kepiro was also charged with being a member of a squad that murdered people in their homes. He denied committing murder or knowing about the crimes at the time.
“I am innocent, I have committed no murders, no robberies, I only served my country,” Mr Kepiro said in a final statement read by an aide before the verdict.
Mr Kepiro lived in Argentina from 1948 to 1996. He was spotted in 2006 in Budapest by the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which informed Hungarian authorities.
“Today’s verdict laughs in the face of at least 1,246 victims of the raid of Novi Sad. We are going to do everything we can to overturn this verdict,” the centre’s Efraim Zuroff said after the verdict.
Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic, who helped Mr Zuroff bring the case against Mr Kepiro in 2008, said he had expected a guilty verdict. “I expected that the Hungarian court would put an end to ugly times,” Mr Vukcevic said outside the courtroom.
“I was shocked with (the audience’s) behaviour in the court and the fact that the verdict was greeted with applause. It was a nauseating scene.” – (Reuters)