of alleged Nazi criminal Charles Zentai, Australian media reported late Monday, July 4. Zentai, a former soldier in the Hungarian Army, has been accused by the Nazi hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre, of killing an 18-year-old Jewish man in Hungary in November 1944.
The victim, identified as Peter Balazs, was said to have been killed because he failed to wear the Star of David, which was required in countries controlled by the Nazis to identify Jews.
Australian Justice Minister Chris Ellison was to meet government solicitors on Friday, July 8, to decide whether to sign "an official receipt of request" that would allow Zentai to fight his extradition to Hungary in a Perth court, The Australian newspaper reported. Zentai is reportedly living in the Perth suburb of Willeton.
"CONFORMITY WITH LAW"
"This is an area where you have to have things right, you cannot simply arrest someone on a request which is not in conformity with our law," Minister Ellison said. "You have to make sure the request conforms with the law, and that is all we are doing."
Australia has not previously extradited any alleged Nazi war criminals. Alleged Nazi Konrad Kalejs reportedly died aged 88 in a Melbourne nursing home in 2001 while fighting extradition to Latvia. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s chief Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff told reporters he welcomed news of the impending decision.
"We are very hopeful that this time it will result in an extradition and a trial in Europe. The most important thing now is that … the defendant is not allowed to abuse the process. My feeling now is that Zentai will do his best to appear as ill, frail and unfortunate as possible," he said about Zentai, who is now in his 80’s.
STRANGE SYNDROME
"This is a syndrome that we refer to as Wiesenthal-itis or Zuroff-itis. It happens in every case like this." His organization played a key role in collecting evidence to pressure Hungarian authorities to seek the extradition of Zentai to his home land.
It also launched Operation Last Chance, a campaign to encourage former Communist nations like Hungary and other countries to arrest Nazi suspects. Hungary was a close ally of Nazi Germany during World War Two when an estimated 600,000 Hungarian Jews were massacred.
Zentai’s lawyer, Michael Bowden, cautioned however that he expected Justice Minister Ellison to sign off on the extradition request on Friday, July 8. "I don’t think there’s any doubt about that at all. The requirements that have to be met for that to happen are quite minimal," The Australian quoted him as saying. (With Stefan J. Bos, BosNewsLife Research and BosNewsLife News Center)
