Extradition to Hungary of a World War Two crimes suspect and announced plans to take away Australian citizenship of foreigners who incite hatred or have a criminal background.
In response to questions of BosNewsLife in Budapest, Minister Alexander Downer said he had a “brief discussion” with his Hungarian counterpart Thursday about the extradition of 83-year old Charles Zentai, who was arrested by Federal Police and appeared in Perth’s Magistrate’s court in July.
Zentai is wanted in Hungary for the alleged murder of a young Jewish man in Budapest in 1944, when the country was a close ally of Nazi Germany. An estimated 600,000 Hungarian Jews were killed during World War Two, often with the active support of Hungarian fascists, historians say. Charles Zentai has denied any wrongdoing.
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Minister Downer suggested he understood there was international frustration over the perceived slow transfer process, but stressed “the government is certainly doing what it can to facilitate the extradition.”
“In our country people have kind of get used that courts are taking a long time to make decisions. I don’t know if Hungarians are any faster than Australian courts, but I would be pretty surprised if they were,” he told BosNewsLife after talks with Hungarian Foreign Minister Ferenc Somogyi.
NEW SUSPECT
The minister said he also learned of fresh allegations that another Hungarian, Lajos Polgar, had been a youth leader in Hungary’s anti-Semitic Arrow Cross party and an adviser to the fascist government before fleeing to Melbourn where he lived over 50 years to avoid prosecution for war crimes.
Polgar, 89, has reportedly denied the Arrow Cross party was anti-Semitic, claiming “everybody in Hungary was anti-Jewish” during the war. Downer said the Australian government would only get involved if the matter was “brought up formally in Hungary and a request for extradition was made,” or some evidence brought forward which would suggest “some acts of criminality.”
Hungarian Minister Somogyi did not rule out an extradition request for Polgar as well. “There is a chance for everyone [to be extradited] but we have not yet come to that point to decide,” he told BosNewsLife. The are up to 100,000 Hungarian Jews still living in Hungary, where dealing with the country’s Holocaust past remains a sensitive topic.
The extradition discussions come at a time when Australia is also looking into ways to take away Australian citizenship of “people who are involved with incitement,” especially following the September 11, 2001, terror attacks against the United States, Downer said.
INCITEMENT CONCERN
“There are circumstances where we have granted people Australian citizenship [after they migrated to Australia] but we may find that those people are involved with incitement against Australia in one kind or another. The question we are considering is whether in those circumstances we should be able to cancel their citizenship. It’s quit hard to do tough, but we are having a look at issues like that,” he added.
However Hungarian Foreign Minister Somogyi stressed that while he understood Australia’s concern, it was unfortunate that it wavers visa’s for visiting citizens of the 15 ‘old’ European Union members, while people from the ten new EU countries, including Hungary, have to stand in line to get the document.
He said “the current context is unbalanced when it comes to the visa system,” for Hungary which joined the EU last year. Downer promised he would look into a computer system already used for other countries that would make an airplane ticket also a visa entry for Australia.
However “we do need to maintain the integrity of our borders, and since 9/11 we have obviously been very focused on that…We don’t want someone with a criminal background or criminal intend to come to Australia. It is not to suggest that Hungarians are more likely to be criminals, I am sure they are not. But we have to make sure that the systems we put in place for Hungary are consistent with the systems we put in place with other parts of the world,” he added.
