Hungary: Alleged Nazi War Criminal Charged

An alleged Nazi war criminal has been charged with his role in organising the deportation of more than 12,000 Jews to death camps.

Laszlo Csatary, aged 98, had been the number one name on the most-wanted list issued by Nazi-hunters the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

He was confronted last year by The Sun after a tip-off the British newspaper said came from the centre.

Csatary, who has denied the charges, was first detained by Hungarian authorities in July 2012.

He was kept under house arrest for nearly a year while the authorities decided what to do with him.

Charges implicating him in the deportation of 300 Jews were at first dropped due to lack of evidence, but other charges have now been filed after a witness reportedly came forward.

Tuesday's indictment by the Budapest Investigative Prosecutors' Office says Csatary was the chief of an internment camp for Jews in 1944.

The indictment says that, as a local police commander, he had a role in organising the deportation of Jews to Nazi death camps.

The internment camp was run by local police acting on the orders of the Nazi regime.

Prosecutors said he was "actively involved in and assisted the deportations" of Jews from a ghetto in then-Hungarian Kassa, now known as Kosice in Slovakia.

The Jewish population of Kassa and the surrounding area were rounded up and crammed into a ghetto in the town by local police following the occupation of Hungary by German troops in March 1944.

The Jews were then crammed into cargo trains and sent to Nazi concentration camps, mostly Auschwitz.

Csatary "intentionally assisted the unlawful executions and tortures committed against Jewish people who were deported from Kassa", according to the indictment.

He is also accused of beating them with his bare hands and a dog whip.

After Nazi-occupied Hungary's defeat by the Allies, Csatary was said to have fled and ended up in Canada.

He was sentenced to death in his absence in 1948 by a court in what was then Czechoslovakia.

In Canada, he lived and worked as an art dealer but was stripped of his citizenship there in the 1990s after the Canadians were given information about his past.

He ended up in Budapest where he lived freely until prosecutors began investigating his case in September 2011 on the basis of information provided by the Wiesenthal Centre.

He was not arrested until after The Sun tracked him down.

Soon afterwards, Csatary appeared in court at a closed-door hearing and denied all the accusations against him.

At the time, the state prosecutor said he was in good mental and physical health despite his advanced years.

In January, Hungarian radio reported that Slovak police had found a witness able to corroborate charges against him.

One of the obstacles to an investigation into his alleged crimes is thought to have been that he had previously been sentenced to death.

In March, a Slovak court is understood to have changed the 1948 sentence to one of life in jail.

Prosecution spokeswoman Bettina Bagoly said on Tuesday that Csatary's trial is expected to start within three months.