BUDAPEST — Hungarian authorities accused a 97-year-old alleged Nazi-era war criminal of torturing deportees before they were sent to death camps.
Laszlo Csatary was placed under house arrest Wednesday after prosecutors interrogated him, the Budapest Metropolitan Court said. Csatary made a “contradictory” statement, denying charges while saying his actions were done on “higher orders,” Budapest acting chief prosecutor Tibor Ibolya said.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which tracks Nazi-era war criminals to bring them to justice, urged Hungarian officials to arrest Csatary, its “most-wanted Nazi war criminal.”
He was a policeman in 1944 in charge of 12,000 Jews held in a plant in Kosice, now part of Slovakia and then part of Hungary. He beat detainees with a dog leash “regularly and without justification and without regard to gender, age, or health,” the prosecutor said.