Hungary has placed Nazi war crimes suspect Laszlo Csatary under house arrest and charged him with torturing Jews and deporting thousands to death camps during the second World War.
Csatary (97) was allegedly a senior policeman at the Jewish ghetto in Kosice, a town now in Slovakia but controlled by Hungary during the war, where prosecutors say he regularly whipped Jews before overseeing their deportation to camps at Auschwitz and in Ukraine.
“He denies being guilty of the crimes he is accused of . . . One of his arguments in his defence is that he was obeying orders,” said state prosecutor Tibor Ibolya.
Mr Ibolya added that during questioning Csatary had displayed “an attitude toward some of his fellow men of a certain religion . . . that is not what we would consider normal.”