Australia says war crime suspect can be extradited
31 Mar 2009 04:33:57 GMT Source: Reuters
CANBERRA, March 31 (Reuters) - An alleged World War Two war criminal living in Australia was eligible for extradition to Hungary to face justice, an Australian court ruled on Tuesday. Charles Zentai, 87, was arrested by Australian Federal Police in July 2005 and is accused of taking part in the fatal beating in 1944 of Jewish teenager Peter Balazs in Budapest. At the time Zentai was a 23-year-old warrant officer in the pro-Nazi Hungarian military, but argues he left Budapest with his regiment the day before the murder, on November 8, 1944. A Perth Federal Court judge on Tuesday backed a magistrate's decision last year that Zentai was eligible for extradition, but granted a seven-day stay of execution to allow his lawyers to appeal to the full Federal Court bench, local media said. Zentai, who moved to Perth after the war and became an Australian citizen, denies the allegation against him and says he was not in Hungary at the time. He has spent three years opposing attempts to extradite him to Hungary. He has taken a lie detector test in the effort to prove his innocence. "Karoly" Zentai is listed by the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center as one of the top 10 war criminals still at large, and is accused of taking part in "manhunts, persecution, deportation and murder of Jews". Balazs, 18, was travelling on a tram when he was detained for not wearing the yellow Star of David. He was tortured and killed in an army barracks and his body dumped in the Danube River. Zentai, a retired mental health nurse, told reporters earlier this month before entering court that he would not survive extradition due to a heart condition requiring specialist care. "My health has deteriorated considerably. I was just recently diagnosed with heart failure and (am receiving) other treatment for another heart disease. This is tremendous pressure for me," he said. Zentai lost a challenge in Australia's peak High Court in 2008 after his lawyers unsuccessfully argued the Perth court did not have the power to consider extradition. A decision to extradite Zentai to Hungary will ultimately be made by Australia's Attorney-General Robert McClelland, depending on court rulings. (Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Jerry Norton)
Ethnic Tibetan women hold banners which read "50 years of genocide 1959-2009" during a protest against Chinese rule in Tibet, in central Barcelona, March 28, 2009. China declared March 28 as ...
