Sandor Kepiro, Former Hungarian Military Officer, Charged With War Crimes Related To 1942 Slaughter

BUDAPEST, Hungary — A former Hungarian military officer has been charged with war crimes in the 1942 slaughter of 1,200 civilians in Serbia, prosecutors said Monday.

The charges against Sandor Kepiro, 96, stem from his alleged participation in a raid by Hungarian forces on the northern Serbian town of Novi Sad in January 1942 that left more than 1,200 civilians dead, the Budapest Investigating Prosecutor's Office said.

Kepiro, who was at the top of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's most-wanted war criminals list, returned to Hungary in 1996 after living for decades in Argentina. Hungarian authorities reopened Kepiro's case after his whereabouts were uncovered in 2006 by Efraim Zuroff, the Wiesenthal Center's chief Nazi hunter.

"I am innocent and need to be acquitted," Kepiro told The Associated Press by phone from his apartment in Budapest. "I am bedridden and can't leave my home. I have nothing."

Kepiro, who turns 97 on Friday, said he wants to return to his family in Argentina and stay there at a nursing home.

Most of those killed in the raids in the wake of the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia in World War II were Jews, Serbs and Gypsies, also known as Roma. Some 550,000 Hungarian Jews and 50,000 Roma died in the Holocaust.

Hungary joined the Axis powers after the start of the war but was occupied by Germany in 1944 after attempting peace talks with the Allied powers.

Kepiro's was discovered as part of Operation Last Chance – a campaign led by Zuroff to locate and prosecute Holocaust war criminals before they die.

"It has been an uphill battle to convince Hungarian authorities to bring him to justice," Zuroff told the AP from Jerusalem. "But this is a powerful message that you can still be held accountable even for crimes committed decades ago."

Kepiro said his task in Novi Sad was to supervise the identities of those being rounded up, but he denied knowing about the killings until after they were carried out. The bodies were dumped into the Danube River.

In 1944, Kepiro was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a military court for charges stemming from the Novi Sad raids, but the verdict was later annulled in a retrial. Kepiro, at the time a gendarmerie captain, said he was a scapegoat in a show trial meant to exonerate his superiors.

According to Zuroff, Kepiro was convicted again in 1946 for his role in the raids, but Hungarian prosecutors have not been able to find records of the trial.

Hungarian officials, however, did find new documents recently in archives in Belgrade, the Serbian capital, and used those to prepare the current charges against Kepiro, said Gabriella Skoda, a spokeswoman for the Prosecutor's Office.

In 2009, a Budapest court denied the prosecution's request for Kepiro to be banned from leaving his home and Skoda said Monday that no similar appeals were planned now.

Kepiro's lawyer said he would ask the courts to postpone a defamation suit launched last year by Kepiro against Zuroff, at least until the charges against his client are settled.

"I expect the independent Hungarian courts to exonerate Sandor Kepiro," Zsolt Zetenyi said. "The documents are incapable of demonstrating his criminal responsibility and I am convinced that he did not commit any war crimes."

Comments

[Polly Wilson]

03:14 PM on 02/19/2011

I suppose we should be grateful that The Big Fat Gypsy Wedding is about the worst it gets in maligning Traveller/Gypsies these days - at least we don't have to cope with Nazi thugs slaughtering us. So he is 97 years old - all those years he lived and all those years he deprived others of living - and I wonder - did he excuse Jews and Gypsies for the crime of existing simply because they were senior citizens? I am a senior citizen myself and I hold myself accountable for my actions. So is he. At least he will be tried in a court of law - not just killed out of hand.

[RockyMissouri]

06:28 PM on 03/23/2011

96 years of life....70 some years that he got....that others did NOT.

[PerfectTommy]

04:23 PM on 02/17/2011

I'm for no statute of limitations. Age should be no excuse.

[DupontDem]

03:44 PM on 02/17/2011

This 96yo "chap" does not dispute that he was present and a captain in command of part of the police force that murdered 4,211 people over the course of two days (according to wikipeadia). He was convicted by the Hungarian government in 1944 (but then freed by the Nazi's when they occupied Hungary later that year). He was convicted again in 1946 by another Hungarian court, but fled to South America and hid for 50 years in Argentina. He is charged based upon evidence that includes direct testimony that he was an active participant in the massacre.

The Serbian and Jewish victims were rounded up at random and taken from their homes and businesses during the day (some even taken from a wedding). They taken to the bank of the Danube to be shot and killed. The victims, some still alive, had their bodies thrown under the ice of the frozen river. Most of the victims drowned. The fascist forces shot at those who were still afloat.

Who can honestly say that someone who commits this kind of crime should be able to get away with it simply because he had help from the nazi's an others in escaping justice for so long? More people died at Novi Sad than did in this country on 9/11. It's been almost 10 years since 9/11. Should we stop hunting Bin Laden?

[metaluna]

03:43 PM on 02/17/2011

To those who invoke the very-old-man or ancient history excuses: such monstrous crimes can not be erased by the passage of time nor does physical debility lessen guilt. Generations who are remote from the horrors of that time need to see justice, however delayed, done. Anyway there is no statute of limitations for one murder let alone thousands.

[tjunkie]

02:23 AM on 02/17/2011

No offense but is has been almost 70 years ago. Can't we learn to forgive after so many years.

[SPacific]

02:55 PM on 02/17/2011

Forgive murdering people?..........Wow....just wow........

[Polly Wilson]

09:13 PM on 03/23/2011

To forgive does not mean not to hold someone accountable - two different issues. I may forgive you for breaking my window, but I still expect you to replace it - if you want a banal example.Of course, if you allegedly murdered someone you can not make recompense for the life (lives) you took - but that does not mean that you should not be held accountable.. It is not a matter of time past since the offence - that is irrelevant - it does not cease to be less wrong as time passes - and a person allegedly guilty of a crime is no less guilty today than they were on the day they committed it.

[duxguts]

11:37 PM on 02/16/2011

We should be thinking about our own war criminals.

[StansDad]

11:28 PM on 02/16/2011

Pointless expenditure, the man will die soon anyway, why bother taking people's money to put on a show?

[EveAngel]

08:47 PM on 02/16/2011

hang him

[ken607]

05:51 PM on 02/16/2011

who in government isnt?

[piul05]

01:49 PM on 02/16/2011

It's a tough call; there should be not statutory limitations on war crimes.

Having said that, there are criteria that cannot be overlooked;

1. the strength of the evidence against him;

1. his ability - both physical and psychological - to stand trial;

3. the guarantee that a legitimate policy (going after war crimes) is not used as a deflection from present crimes, or as a propaganda tool.

If these requisites are not fulfilled, then justice is not served.

[tjunkie]

02:24 AM on 02/17/2011

I agree. After almost 70 years, the evidence could be a little sketchy. Come on, he is a 96 years old chap..why still bother after these many years...he would probably passed on before the trial is complete and in the end it just waste tax payer's money

[Polly Wilson]

09:16 PM on 03/23/2011

To attempt to seek justice can never be a waste of money. Either the law is there to treat everyone equally - regardless of age - or it is not a just law.

[notfooledbyu]

12:09 PM on 02/16/2011

Reckless vindictiveness, by hateful people, pursuing an outdated cause, for personal notoriety. I wonder how many innocents, or people who were victims themselves, vulnerable to the appearance of guilt merely because of proximity, have been harassed, tried, or convicted.

[santiago sherwood]

07:54 PM on 02/16/2011

no, everyone is held accountable and there is no escaping your past your present and your future. we carry all of it with us and we must accept is we are the culmination of our decisions even our bad one. So stop living in a fantasy as all of us must accept being held accountable forever

[DupontDem]

03:57 PM on 02/17/2011

The man has been twice convicted of participating in genocidal murder of over 4,000 people (all civilians - including children). He escaped jail time with the help of Nazi's and hid for over 50 years in Argentina. He admits he was present at the massacre. He admits he commanded police who slaughtered the victims. His only defense is he claims he technically did not pull the trigger (other eye witnesses say he did).

And just curious, who are the "hateful people"? I noticed you have other posts linking this prosecution to your criticism of Israel. Hmmm.......what is that telling us???

[hello All]

06:51 AM on 02/16/2011

Moral is, sooner or later justice will be served for those innocent Gazans civilians killed in indiscriminate night raids.

[ChrisDwane]

11:54 AM on 02/16/2011

somewhere a hamas war criminal is reading your post and thinking... "our plan to doop the naive westerners is working"

[notfooledbyu]

12:12 PM on 02/16/2011

Somewhere an Israeli war criminal is thinking "naw, I'll get away with it"

[rissole]

02:19 AM on 02/16/2011

Did he ever fire missiles from a drone into a wedding party?

[jJohnson1]

01:53 AM on 02/16/2011

after any war anyone that pulls a trigger, stabs, cuts, bombs and takes the life of another is a killer and criminal including those in charge and on the winning or losing side. im Polish my family lived through the war even fought in the resistance and even they admitted regret aftwards. you kill doesnt matter who or why its still a murder justify it by whatever means you like inside you know right from wrong. god doesnt exist or we wouldnt of had the war and we wouldnt have these discussions on attrocities. make the biblical claims and the justification banter all you like but honestly if i was told to by my superior officer in a war i would take anyones life that i had to if it meant me living. its called survival and im going to do just that rght wrong it doesnt matter.

[ivan ko]

07:50 PM on 02/15/2011

In a way this is funny. This guy is charged for war crimes committed in Serbia during WWII while thousands of Serb war criminals live freely all over Serbia.

[Polly Wilson]

09:24 PM on 03/23/2011

Its not funny - it is tragic - and to all those above who have pointed to atrocities committed since the Nazi era, remember this: the global experience of 'ethnic cleansing' the terrible lives and suffering endured by countless people for being 'in the wrong place at the wrong time' in subsequent decades, was,perhaps for the first time in the 2nd World War seen as a 'legitimate' tactic of a government to remove those from their population that they did not want - there have been countless others since: Idi Amin, Poll Pot, Yugoslavia, Darfour, etc. etc. - does that mean those who were in on the ground floor of this 20th/21st century madness should be excused???