Nazi war crimes

The trial of one of the world's most-wanted World War II war crimes suspects opened in Budapest on Thursday. Sandor Kepiro, a former Hungarian military officer who is accused of complicity in the murder of more than 1,200 Serbian and Jewish civilians in a massacre in Serbia in 1942, proclaimed his innocence.

"I have never been a murderer," he said before the trial.

"I was there in the raid, but all we did was ask for papers. The murders happened in a completely separate location, by the Danube. I wasn't anywhere near them."

In court on Thursday, the 97-year-old also called the trial a "circus" based on "lies."

Kepiro is one of the last surviving suspects listed by the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center. The center's Jerusalem director, Efraim Zuroff, tracked Kepiro down in Budapest. He had been living there in obscurity since 1996 after decades spent in Argentina.

Kepiro has already been convicted twice for his role in the massacre, but has never been punished. A Hungarian court sentenced him to ten years in prison in 1944, but that sentence was overturned by the Nazi-backed fascist regime that took power in the waning days of WWII.

Trial important for Hungary

He was convicted again by the communist government in 1946, this time in absentia because he fled to Argentina. Wiesenthal's Zuroff believes the trial not only finally holds him to account, it is also an important step for Hungary.

"It can help teach Hungarian society about the role of Hungarians in Holocaust crimes, help them confront that reality honestly," he told Deutsche Welle.

"It also sends a message of the dangers of hate, anti-semitism and racism and that's a lesson that, given the rise of the right-wing in Hungary today and the problems with the Roma, is also important," he added.

During the Novi Sad massacre of 1942 over 1,200 Jews, Serbs and Roma were killed in reprisals. Novi Sad is now in northern Serbia, but was then occupied jointly by Hungarian and German forces.

Kepiro had sued Zuroff for libel. But in a verdict on Tuesday the judge of the Pest Central District Court said that Zuroff "had grounds and acted in good faith when he accused the former gendarmerie captain Sandor K. of war crimes."

Hungary criticized for lack of interest in trial

Meanwhile, journalists in Hungary and Serbia have criticized the Hungarian government for being almost indifferent to the case.

"It [the trial] is being covered in independent publications, but they are largely confined to the internet," Gabor Bodis, a TV journalist in Budapest, told Deutsche Welle.

"They previewed it, but it will be interesting to see how the government-friendly media and those even more to the right than Viktor Orban's government cover it," he added.

Bodis claims the Hungarian justice system is very slow and he, along with some of his colleagues believes the Hungarian government was not bending over backwards to bring Kepiro to trial.

"So, it's only logical that it was expected that nature would take its course, and that, therefore, no court would have to deal with whether he is guilty or not," Zuzana Serences, a journalist from Novi Sad, where the massacre took place, told Deutsche Welle.

Zuroff, however, said the fact that a Hungarian court acquitted him of libel charges brought by Kepiro, while emphasizing the importance of the work the Wiesenthal Center does, was encouraging.

Authors: Nicole Goebel, Dinko Gruhonjic, Mirjana Dikic
Editor: Rob Turner