Ninety seven year-old Hungarian faces trial for Nazi crimes

A 97-year-old former Hungarian army officer swore he was innocent of the Nazi-era murder of 36 Serbs and Jews on the opening day of a trial 69 years after the crimes were committed. Before his capture, Sandor Kepiro was number one on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s list of most wanted World War II criminals.

AFP/Attila Kisbenedek

“I am innocent,” Kepiro told the Budapest court, where he faces a possible life sentence for murders that took place during raids by Hungarian forces on the Serbian town of Novi Sad in January 1942.

More than 1,200 Jews and Serbs died in the massacres at a time when Hungary was allied to Nazi Germany.

Prosecutor Zsolt Falvai said Kepiro was directly responsible for the death of 36 people: four were murdered in their home by members of his patrol; two were brothers he refused to set free; and 30 others were ordered aboard a lorry to take them to a field where they were shot.

But Kepiro insisted that the charges were lies and claims to have saved the lives of a family of five.

"I knew nothing of the massacres,” he told reporters before the trial. “The soldiers told me nothing. This is a circus."

Kepiro, who was accompanied by his 60-year-old daughter, is frail and hard of hearing. He complained of not being able to hear the judges’ opening and another relative, Eva Kadar, repeated the questions to him.

He has already been found guilty for the crimes twice. In 1944 he was sentenced to 10 years but freed by the fascist government. A retrial in absentia under communist rule resulted in a 14-year sentence.

Kepiro fled to Austria and then Argentina, returning to Budapest in 1996.

Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff tracked him down 10 years later.