Serbia Investigates Nazi War Criminal

by Ese Omofoma
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

BELGRADE, Serbia - Serbia's war crimes prosecutors formally launched proceedings Wednesday against a World War II suspect accused of participating in mass killings of Jews and Serbs during the Nazi occupation.

Sandor Kepiro, a Hungarian citizen, is suspected of playing a role in a raid by Hungarian forces in January of 1942 in Northern Serbia.  The prosecutor's office said Hungarian forces, "in an attempt to destroy members of the Jewish and Serbian national groups, they killed at least 2,000 of them."  Prosecutors have lodged a request for an investigation against Kepiro with the Belgrade war crimes court.  The request is the first step toward an indictment and a trial.

Prosecutors also requested the court extradite Kepiro to Serbia.

The prosecutor's office said it had evidence of the mass killings of civilians in the northern town of Novi Sad.  "The civilians were killed in their homes, on streets, playgrounds and by the Danube river, where they were pushed through holes in the ice, either while still alive of having been shot."

The civilians were stripped naked and all their personal belongings were taken away, the statement added.

Prosecutors say Kepiro was a gendarme captain who was in charge of a group of street patrols that killed at least 42 Serb and Jewish civilians, 11 of them children.

Last week, Efraim Zuroff, leading Nazi hunter and head of the Israeli branch of Simon Wiesenthal Center, visited Serbia and urged authorities to seek the extradition of Kepiro and two other WWII suspects.

Kepiro had emigrated to Argentina after WWII but returned to Hungary in 1996.  He was never punished for his role in the killings in Serbia.

Kepiro is now 94 years old.

For more information, please see:

CNN - Serbs probe suspected Nazi war criminal - 24 September 2008

International Herald Tribune - Serb prosecutors seek probe against WWII suspect - 24 September 2008

Reuters - Serbia investigates World War Two genocide suspect - 24 September 2008