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One of the world's most-wanted Nazi war criminals, Sandor Kepiro, 97, is to go on trial in Hungary on charged with the murder of 36 people in Novi Sad, Serbia, in 1942. The trial offered a chance for justice to finally be done "so that the people of Novi Sad and their families and the victims of the mass murders carried out by the Hungarian forces in January 1942 ... can finally achieve a measure of closure, even if it is many years after the crimes." The trial is scheduled to begin at the Budapest Municipal Court on Thursday, with six days so far set aside for hearings. However, it is not yet clear how long it will last or when a verdict can be expected.
Kepiro has denied all of the charges against him, insisting that he killed nobody and that he was only following orders. However, he was already found guilty of the crimes in Novi Sad in 1944 in Hungary and again in 1946. He was sentenced again to 14 years in prison in 1946, but did not serve any time as he fled to Argentina where he remained for half a century.
In 2006, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Nazi hunter Ephraim Zuroff tracked him down in Budapest, where he had been living since returning to the country on a Hungarian passport in 1996. Kepiro is defended by the National Legal Foundation, headed by Tamas Nagy Gaudi, a member of parliament of the extreme-right Jobbik party.
