98-Year-Old Charged with Execution, Torture of Jews

On Tuesday, prosecutors in Budapest, Hungary, charged a 98-year-old who is listed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as the most wanted war crimes suspect, for helping to deport Jews to Auschwitz in World War II, Reuters reports.

Laszlo Csatary, who in 1944 served as police commander in the Nazi-occupied eastern Slovak city of Kosice, was found guilty in absentia, in 1948, for whipping and torturing Jews and then helping to deport them to Auschwitz.

Csatary was sentenced to death and stayed off the grid for decades, until his detention last year by Hungarian authorities. He remained under house arrest in Budapest since last July. He pleaded Not guilty to the charges.

In March, a Slovak court commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment.

"He is charged with the unlawful execution and torture of people, committing war crimes partly as a perpetrator, partly as an accomplice," Bettina Bagoly, a spokeswoman for the Budapest Chief Prosecutor's Office told reporters. She said Csatary's case could go to trial in September.