Serbian prosecutors launched a war crimes investigation of a 94-year-old alleged mass murderer.
Sandor Kepiro is accused of participating in the killing of Jews and Serbs during World War II. The investigation opened Wednesday. Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, and Serbian prosecutors want Kepiro extradited from Hungary. The prosecutor’s office accuses Kepiro of participating “in full conscience and of free will” in the killings of some 2,000 Jews and Serbs. Kepiro is thought to have participated in the Great Raid of 1942, when approximately 800 Jews and 400 Serbs were robbed of their possessions, forced to strip naked, shot and drowned in the freezing Danube River, which runs in the northern city of Novi Sad. Kepiro returned to Hungary in 1996 after immigrating to Argentina after World War II. Hungarian prosecutors had launched an investigation of Kepiro at the behest of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, but he was not punished for participating in the killings in Serbia. The Simon Wiesenthal Center was credited in a statement with aiding the Serbian prosecutor’s office with the probe.
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