Slovakia’s justice minister has asked a court to seek the extradition of a Hungarian man found guilty in absentia in 1948 of whipping or torturing Jews and helping to deport them to the Auschwitz death camp during the second World War.
Laszlo Csatary (97), named by Nazi hunters from the Simon Wiesenthal Center as their most wanted war crimes suspect, was a police commander in the eastern Slovak city of Kosice during the war. He has denied any guilt.
Hungarian authorities arrested Csatary and put him under house arrest in Budapest earlier this month after he had spent decades on the run.
Slovak justice minister Tomas Borec said yesterday that a court in Kosice had been asked to handle Csatary’s case.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center said it had provided Hungary with evidence that Csatary helped to organise the deportation of about 16,000 Jews to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland from Kosice, which became part of Hungary in 1938 and was returned to Czechoslovakia after the end of the war. – (Reuters)