(14 Feb 2011)
1. Wide of holocaust memorial by River Danube in Novi Sad where 1,200 civilians were drowned in 1942
2. Mid of monument
3. Close up of writing on monument
4. SOUNDBITE: (English) Ana Frenkel, Associate of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Novi Sad:
"I feel totally satisfied that finally, but really finally, they started to prosecute him. Sandor Kepiro is going to be 97 in several days, so somehow it seems like a farce to charge him now and they should have started four and a half years ago."
5. Wreaths laid by holocaust monument
6. SOUNDBITE: (English) Ana Frenkel, Associate of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Novi Sad:
"The Hungarian prosecutors should have really reacted earlier, but even now I am happy and satisfied that they are starting. It does not mean that they are going to finish the entire story. They just started."
7. Mid of River Danube in Novi Sad
8. Close up of River Danube
STORYLINE:
An associate of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre on Monday said she was "totally satisfied" that former Hungarian military officer Sandor Kepiro had finally been charged with crimes committed in Serbia in 1942, but said proceeding should have started much earlier.
Ana Frenkel said that it seemed "like a farce" to charge Kepiro so long after the event, "and they should have started four and a half years ago".
Kepiro, 96, was charged with war crimes for the killing of four civilians during a 1942 mass slaughter of 1,200 people in Serbia, prosecutors said on Monday.
The charges against the former military officer stem from his alleged participation in a raid by Hungarian forces on the northern Serbian town of Novi Sad in January 1942 that left more than 1,200 civilians dead, the Budapest Investigating Prosecutor's Office said.
According to court papers, unidentified members of a patrol under Kepiro's command killed the four during the raid on January 23, 1942.
One of the victims, Irene Weisz, was shot while in bed.
Kepiro, who was at the top of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's (named after the famed Nazi hunter) most-wanted war criminals list, returned to Hungary in 1996 after living for decades in Argentina.
Hungarian authorities reopened Kepiro's case after his whereabouts were uncovered in 2006 by the Wiesenthal Centre's chief Nazi hunter.
He has denied the charges.
Most of those killed in the raids in the wake of the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia in World War II were Jews, Serbs and Gypsies, also known as Roma.
Some 550-thousand Hungarian Jews and 50-thousand Roma died in the Holocaust.
Kepiro said his task in Novi Sad was to supervise the identities of those being rounded up, but he denied knowing about the killings until after they were carried out.
The bodies were dumped into the Danube River.
In 1944, Kepiro was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Hungarian military court for charges stemming from the Novi Sad raids, but the verdict was later annulled in a retrial.
Kepiro, at the time a gendarmerie captain, said he was a scapegoat in a show trial meant to exonerate his superiors.
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