Hungarian lawyer seeks indictment against Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff
A Hungarian lawyer has urged authorities to charge Nazi
hunter Efraim Zuroff with making “false statements” against an alleged war
criminal.
Attorney Futo Barnabas said Zuroff, director of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center in Israel, should be indicted for leveling false allegations
against Laszlo Csatary, whom police arrested last month. Zuroff gave
testimonies to Budapest prosecutors that Csatary had organized deportations of
Hungarian Jews from Kosice in 1941 and 1944.
Prosecutors dismissed the 1941 charges last week as
“unsubstantiated” but are still investigating those pertaining to 1944.
Citing the dismissal, Barnabas told the conservative
newspaper Magyar Nemzet that “there are valid grounds to charge Zuroff with
deliberately making a false accusation.” The offense, which is meant to
discourage libelous complaints, carries a five-year prison sentence, according
to Barnabas.
Contacted by JTA, Barnabas said in German that he would
only agree to be interviewed in Hungarian.
A spokeswoman for the Budapest prosecutor’s office,
Bettina Bagoly, is quoted as telling the Hungarian paper that she was not aware
of any pending investigation against Zuroff.
In 1944, Csatary was a police officer in Kassa, now
Kosice in Slovakia. He is accused of organizing transports of at least 15,000
Jews to Ukraine.
Csatary fled to Canada in 1949 after a Czechoslovakian
court sentenced him in absentia to death for war crimes. He returned to
Budapest 15 years ago, after Ottawa annulled his Canadian citizenship.
Based on Zuroff’s research, The Sun newspaper of London
reported on Csatary’s whereabouts in July. Budapest’s chief prosecutor said on
July 17 that the research “contains no new evidence.” Csatary was nonetheless
placed under house arrest the next day.
Last year, a Budapest court acquitted Zuroff of libel
charges. Sandor Kepiro, then a suspected war criminal, sued Zuroff for voicing
the suspicions. Kepiro was acquitted last year.
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