97-year-old man cleared of war crime charge from 1942

Published on Monday 18 July 2011 13:36

A 97-year-old man has been cleared of war crimes stemming from a raid by Hungarian forces that killed 35 people in Serbia during World War II, shocking those who considered the case "one of the last major trials" of alleged Holocaust-era war criminal suspects.

"It's an absolutely outrageous decision," said Efraim Zuroff, the chief Nazi hunter with the Wiesenthal Center's Jerusalem office, who instigated the investigation into Sandor Kepiro's war record in 2006.

It "flies in the face of all the evidence, everything we know about this dark event and the mass murder that took place in Novi Sad," added Mr Zuroff.

Mr Kepiro had been charged with alleged involvement in the killing of Jews and Serbs during an anti-partisan raid in the Serbian city of Novi Sad, then under Hungarian control, on 23 January, 1942. He returned to Hungary in 1996 after decades in Argentina.

In Serbia, deputy war crimes prosecutor Bruno Vekaric said they expected Hungarian prosecutors to appeal the verdict.

"Of course, we are not pleased," Mr Vekaric said.

Prosecutors and the defence have until Friday to appeal.

Hungary was allied with Germany, Italy and Japan from 1940, and took part in the 1941 invasion of Yugoslavia, of which Serbia was then part.

Prosecutors claimed unidentified members of a patrol under Mr Kepiro's command killed four people during the raid. Mr Kepiro, at the time a gendarmerie captain, was also suspected of being involved in the deaths of around 30 others who were executed on the banks of the Danube River.

Many of the dozens of people attending the court session cheered and clapped after judge Bela Varga read out the verdict of the three-judge tribunal

Before reading out the verdict, Judge Varga said Mr Kepiro had been brought to the tribunal by ambulance and had spent the past week in hospital. The judge said he had apparently been given the wrong medication.

In a statement from Mr Kepiro read out at the start of the court session, he rejected all the charges.

"I am innocent. I never killed, never stole. I served my country," said the statement read out by Mr Kepiro's psychologist, who added that Mr Kepiro returned to Hungary from Argentina in 1996 "because for him without Hungary there is no life."

In an unusual procedure, the verdict was being given over two days as doctors said only two court sessions of 45 minutes could be held daily due to Mr Kepiro's frail health.

After he was cleared, Mr Kepiro - who sat in a wheelchair during the session, had an IV drip in his arm and did not speak - was taken out of the courtroom by paramedics upon the request of his lawyer, Zsolt Zetenyi.In 1941, in the wake of the Nazi occupation and breakup of Yugoslavia, Hungarian forces entered northern Serbia - which had been part of Hungary until World War I. In early 1942, those Hungarian forces carried out raids to counter the growing number of partisan attacks.

Mr Kepiro said earlier that his task was to supervise the identification of people being rounded up, but he said he was unaware of the killings until after they had been carried out. About 800 Serbs and 400 Jews are thought to have been killed in the raids.

In January 1944, Mr Kepiro and several other officers were convicted of disloyalty by a military court for their role in the Novi Sad raids. The 10-year prison sentence, of which Mr Kepiro served a few weeks, was later annulled and his rank reinstated.