A 90-year-old man accused of being a Nazi war criminal yesterday won his fight to stay in Australia, ending a legal battle to extradite him to Hungary over the 1944 murder of a Jewish teenager.
Zentai was allegedly one of three Nazi-backed Hungarian soldiers who... killed a Jewish boy in Budapest
Charles Zentai was allegedly one of three Nazi-backed Hungarian soldiers who tortured and killed the 18-year-old in Budapest, but he has always maintained his innocence.
“The effect of the High Court’s decision is that Mr Zentai will not be surrendered to Hungary,” a spokesman for Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said, confirming that the decision was final.
“Mr Zentai cannot be surrendered for extradition because the offence of ‘war crime’ did not exist under Hungarian law at the time of Mr Zentai’s alleged criminal conduct.”
Hungary first requested the extradition of Mr Zentai, an Australian citizen, in 2005 for the offence of “war crime”, namely a fatal assault on Peter Balazs, in November 1944 for not wearing a yellow Star of David.
He and two fellow soldiers in the Hungarian army, which was then allied to the Germans, were accused of beating Mr Balazs and then tossing his body into the Danube River.
Mr Zentai has always claimed he had already left Nazi-occupied Budapest by then and could not have been involved in the murder.
“The way I feel at the moment... I’m just overwhelmed,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Perth.
“I’ve been so stressed, the last few days in particular, so now I just don’t know how I feel.”
Asked whether he was still prepared to be questioned by Hungarian authorities if they came to Australia, he said: “Oh yes, I am.” The Australian government agreed to send Mr Zentai to Hungary to face the allegations in late 2009 but he fought a legal battle against the move and the Federal Court eventually overturned his extradition.
Canberra pushed ahead with its case, despite pleas from Mr Zentai’s family that he was elderly and had health problems, appealing the Federal Court’s interpretation of an “extraditable offence”.
In late 2011, when the government was granted leave to appeal to the High Court, the nation’s highest judicial authority, it said the matter raised “a significant issue for the administration of Australia’s extradition regime”.
It said yesterday that the High Court decision provided certainty about the interpretation of a provision of Australia’s extradition treaty with Hungary but did not alter extradition arrangements.
Mr Zentai’s lawyer Denis Barich confirmed that he received a letter from the Attorney General’s department saying that extradition proceedings had been concluded.