Hungary’s Sandor Kepiro, until recently the world’s most wanted Nazi war crimes suspect, died yesterday in Budapest aged 97, according to his family.
The announcement, reported by the Hungarian news agency MTI, came six weeks after a Budapest court cleared Kepiro of the war crimes charges against him.
“Sandor Kepiro... died Saturday morning, the family and lawyer of the deceased announced,” MTI reported, without giving any details of the exact time or cause of death.
The former Hungarian gendarmerie captain had been suspected of ordering the execution of over 30 Jews and Serbs in the Serbian town of Novi Sad in January 1942.
Until his acquittal, Kepiro had topped the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s list of most wanted Nazi war criminals.
In Belgrade, Serb war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic voiced regret that Kepiro had died, claiming justice had not yet been done for the victims of the Novi Sad killings.
“We regret that the truth has not been established before justice regarding this crime and that justice has not been served for the victims,” Vukcevic was quoted as saying by the Serbian Tanjug news agency.
The court in Budapest had freed Kepiro on July 18, following a two-month trial that relied heavily on evidence contained in old documents and testimonies.In his closing remarks after that verdict, Judge Bela Varga noted that the trial “has primarily raised concerns and doubts, but no facts.
“Because there were so many doubts and concerns, the court acquitted (Kepiro) not on the basis of the lack of a criminal act, but based on the lack of proof,” he said.
Kepiro had faced a possible life sentence for his alleged participation in a raid by Hungarian forces – then allied to Nazi Germany – in Novi Sad on January 21-23, 1942, in which more than 1,200 Jews and Serbs were murdered.
Visibly weakened at his trial, Kepiro, who always insisted on his innocence, had been in hospital since July.
Although he was deemed fit enough to stand trial, the proceedings dragged on to take into account the defendant’s diminishing health and poor hearing, and he appeared in court for the verdict in a wheelchair and with a drip attached to his arm.
“I am innocent, I never killed, I never robbed,” he had insisted before the verdict.