is wanted in Hungary for the World War Two killing of at least one young Jewish man. 83-year old Charles Zentai was arrested by Federal Police and appeared in Perth’s Magistrate’s court late Friday, July 8, Australian radio reported. Zentai is wanted in Hungary for the alleged murder of a young Jewish man in Budapest in 1944.
The victim, identified as 18-year old 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. Zentai says he is innocent.
Hungary’s authorities asked for his extradition following an investigation into the allegations earlier this year. Budapest had received information on Zentai from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which investigates Nazi war crimes.
BODY IN RIVER
The Wiesenthal Centre has claimed that Zentai and two others tortured and murdered the Jewish man and threw his body into the river. But Zentai has said he was not even in Budapest at the time, the Australian ABC Local Radio network reported.
It would be the first time that Australia extradites a Nazi war crimes suspect. Alleged Nazi Konrad Kalejs reportedly died aged 88 in a Melbourne nursing home in 2001 while fighting extradition to Latvia.
The Wiesenthal Centre’s Chief Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff said he welcomed Australia’s intention to extradite Zentai. "On a day like this, I think that for the family of Peter Balasz, who Mr Zentai is suspected of murdering in Budapest in November of 1944, this must be a very important milestone on the way to closure for them and their tragedy," he told ABC Local Radio monitored by BosNewsLife News Center.
MANY MORE TRAGEDIES
"But that tragedy is really like a microcosm of the tragedies suffered by so many families and so many communities during the Holocaust," he added. About 600,000 Hungarian Jews were killed during World War Two when Hungary was for the most part a close ally of Nazi Germany.
The Australia-Israel and Jewish Affairs Council told Australian ABC News Online that it welcomed the Federal Government’s moves to extradite the suspected Nazi war criminal. "We believe that if the evidence is there, there’s every possibility that there could be a conviction in this case," said Council Executive Director Colin Rubenstein.
"We’re very pleased that the Hungarians have obviously provided the requisite evidence to enable our authorities to take this step," he added. However Zentai’s lawyer Michael Bowden warned that the "extradition will be challenged on a number of bases, not only the legal and formal requirements, but also the manner in which the original evidence they’re relying on was obtained."
RELEASED ON BAIL
He told ABC Local Radio his client was released on bail and ordered to surrender his passport. "Mr Zentai [is] 83 [and has] been in Australia for an excess of 50 years. He has known about this [allegations] for some considerable period of time and obviously doesn’t represent a flight risk, as the magistrate has found."
The Budapest military prosecutor’s office reportedly issued an international arrest warrant in March, and an extradition request was made in April. But it took until Friday for Australian Justice Minister Chris Ellison to make a decision.
"We had to ensure that the request was in the proper form for the Extradition Act," explained Ellison in an interview with Australian ABC Local Radio. "I could not make my decision publicly known until the Hungarian Government had been advised…We communicated my decision to the Hungarian authorities and the Australian Federal Police of course executed the warrant. I think that the best thing now is for the Court of Petty Sessions to deal with the matter…"
Charles Zentai’s actual extradition hearing in the Magistrates’ Court was expected to start in the next few weeks, ABC Local Radio said. (With Stefan J. Bos, BosNewsLife Research and reports from Australia and Hungary).
