Zentai awarded costs in legal challenge
TAXPAYERS will carry the financial burden incurred by alleged war criminal Charles Zentai, after the Federal Court awarded him costs in his successful challenge against the Federal Government to extradite him to Hungary.
TAXPAYERS will carry the financial burden incurred by alleged war criminal Charles Zentai, after the Federal Court awarded him costs in his successful challenge against the Federal Government to extradite him to Hungary.
The December 10 order comes after Justice Neil McKerracher ruled in July that the extradition decision was outside the government’s jurisdiction and that Home Affairs Minister Brendan O’Connor had failed to consider that the alleged actions of the defendant were not considered a war crime under Hungarian law at the time.
The Minister had also failed to consider it would be “oppressive and incompatible with humanitarian consideration” to extradite him, due to age, ill health and the severity of any sentence he might receive in Hungary, the judge stated.
Zentai, 89, who is accused of a role in the 1944 Budapest murder of Jewish teenager Peter Balazs, whose body was thrown into the Danube River, now awaits a decision by the Minister on whether he will appeal the ruling. O’Connor said he would take advice on the court orders and would consider the appeal, which he needs to do by January 24, but made no other comments.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Dr Danny Lamm this week urged the Government to defend the Minister’s decision.
“Very serious matters of public interest are at stake,” Dr Lamm stated.
“For example, the Federal Court found that the war crime of which Zentai is accused was not known to the law of Hungary in 1944 and is therefore not a ‘qualifying extradition offence’ under Australia’s extradition laws. Yet war crimes have been a part of customary international law, binding on all nations, for more than a century. Many of these crimes were codified in the Hague Regulations in 1907.”
Meanwhile, Nazi hunter Dr Efraim Zuroff, Israel director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, will fly to Budapest this week to meet with Hungarian Justice Minister Tibor Navracsics.
Dr Zuroff said he had been told by Navracsics that there is no statute of limitations on the type of crimes of which Zentai is accused and the request for his extradition remains in force.
“I will continue to pursue this matter with the relevant local officials in order to facilitate justice. The Balazs family, Hungarian society, and all persons of morality and conscience deserve no less,” the Israeli Nazi hunter said.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Operation Last Chance, which aims to find alleged war criminals still at large, located Zentai in Perth in 2004. He was arrested on a Hungarian warrant the following year.
PETER KOHN
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