Australian alleged WWII Nazi collaborator wins appeal against extradition to Hungary for trial

Accused WWII criminal wins bid against extradition

PERTH, Australia — An alleged Nazi collaborator wanted in Hungary in the torture and killing of a Jewish teenager in 1944 won an appeal Friday against extradition from his adopted country of Australia.

Charles Zentai, 88, is suspected by the Hungarian government of being one of three men who brutalized and killed a Jewish teenager in Budapest in 1944 for failing to wear a star identifying him as a Jew.

Zentai, who migrated to Australia in 1950 and later became a citizen, says he is innocent and was not even in Budapest at the time.

Hungary issued a warrant for his arrest in 2005, and after a long legal process Australian Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor late last year approved a request to send Zentai back to face trial.

Zentai and his family appealed the decision to Australia’s Federal Court, and on Friday Judge Neil McKerracher ruled in his favor.

McKerracher said O’Connor was not authorized to approve the extradition because Hungary’s accusations against Zentai fell short of what are required under Australian law to honor an extradition request.

“The act permits the extradition of people accused of an offense, not suspected of an offense,” McKerracher said in his judgment. “To surrender a person for extradition when those basic requirements are not satisfied is beyond (the) power” of the minister, he said.

McKerracher also ruled that O’Connor had failed to properly consider whether it would be “oppressive and incompatible with humanitarian consideration” to extradite Zentai because of his age, ill health and the severity of the sentence he could face.

Zentai has not been charged with a crime in Hungary. The country’s Justice Ministry has said it believes the extradition agreement between Hungary and Australia says that suspicion of a crime is enough to warrant the extradition.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish organization based in Los Angeles, lists Zentai among its 10 most wanted suspected former Nazi war criminals and said his age was irrelevant.

“If anything, the Zentai case shows a lack of understanding by the Australian judicial system of the urgency and importance of bringing suspected Holocaust criminals to justice,” Efraim Zuroff, the center’s Israel director, said in a statement. “We urge the Hungarian and Australian authorities to take all possible measures to overturn today’s unfortunate decision.”

Zentai told reporters outside the court in the western city of Perth that he had spent his savings on legal bills to fight the extradition.

“I have lost practically everything,” he said.

O’Connor said in a statement he would read Friday’s verdict closely but that it would be inappropriate to comment further because a decision on Zentai’s extradition could come before him again. Government lawyers did not immediately say if they would appeal.

After O’Connor approved the extradition last November, Hungary said it would wait until all of Zentai’s avenues of appeal had been exhausted before taking any further steps.

An Australian court ruled in 2008 that Zentai was eligible for extradition, but his poor health has kept him out of custody. He appealed the court’s decision in March 2009 and again in October 2009 and lost both times.