New evidence in Hungarian Nazi case

New evidence has emerged suggesting that Hungarian Nazi war crimes suspect Laszlo Csatary was sentenced to 20 years in jail after World War II in 1945 but then escaped, a historian said Sunday.

Historian Zoltan Balassa told the online version of the HVG weekly he has discovered documents showing that Csatary was captured in the Hungarian town of Veszprem and then sentenced in Pecs, but that he then fled the country.

The documents were found in Kosice, the town in present-day Slovakia where Csatary is accused of having committed war crimes as a senior police officer in Hungary's pro-Nazi regime with responsibility for the Jewish ghetto.

Balassa said that with the only other evidence being testimonies from a Czechoslovakian 1948 trial in absentia – which sentenced him to death – these new documents could support a new conviction if the 97-year-old is tried....