This is crazy , prosecute a 97 old man

[seagypsy]

The name thing is a valid concern. There is a woman in AZ with the exact same first, middle and last name as myself and she is about the same age as me too. Even a vague physical description of her would match me. Only a photo and fingerprint would be enough to differentiate between us if we were both to open an account at the same bank. I found her on twitter and we had a laugh about the similarities between us, then appropriately got creeped out by it and cut off contact.

 

[Tiassa]

Incentives

If he is guilty I dont paticually care but I worry that he could be someone with a similar name or looks like him or was in the same area or whatnot that 70 years latter is getting the blame for what someone else did.

That is a just concern.

Some might have faith in the Wiesenthal Centre simply because it is the Wiesenthal Centre. However, if it turns out they hauled the wrong guy to trial, it would ruin them, and their pursuit of the remaining Nazi criminals would be over and done.

If they screw this or any other case so badly, it's over for them.

As incentives go, that's a pretty good one for getting it right.

Let's hope they have the right guy.

 

[Syzygys]

The name thing is a valid concern.

Not really. His name is very not-common, and just how many people live up to 97? Not to mention, a same name guy could have an alibi for those years....

 

[Xotica]

Let's hope they have the right guy.

Hungary nabs Nazi war crimes suspect Laszlo Csatary
July 19, 2012

Hungarian police arrested Nazi war crimes suspect Laszlo Csatary, 97, top of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's wanted list at dawn, Budapest prosecutors said, but he maintained his innocence. Csatary, accused by the Wiesenthal Centre of having helped organise the deportation of some 15,700 Jews to the Auschwitz death camp during World War II, "has been taken into custody," the public prosecutors office said in a statement.

"He denies being guilty of the crimes he is accused of," state prosecutor Tibor Ibolya said. "One of his arguments in his defence is that he was obeying orders."

Source: The Daily Telegraph | Australia

 

[seagypsy]

Source: The Daily Telegraph | Australia

Good point. So there is no question really as to whether or not he is the person who committed the acts, only a question of whether his actions should be considered a crime on his part and whether or not he should be held responsible for the acts.

It leaves one to wonder, we are supposed to obey the laws of the land we are in. But in times of war, are we expected to interpret the laws of the land we are in and decide for ourselves whether or not they should be followed? It makes me wonder how far we are willing to go in enforcing laws made by the UN or whatever when the individuals we prosecute may not be entirely aware of what those UN laws are. The UN didn't exist back then, (did it?) so how can we prosecute people for actions they committed before the actions were illegal. And if they were not illegal in the land they lived in how can we convict them of any crime? If war crimes were not defined until after ww2 then how can we say he committed a crime? If this were any other crime, any good lawyer would get his case thrown out of court. It seems exceptions to accepted law rules are made when it comes to convicting ww2 Nazi's of any crimes. In my mind, Nazis deserve it, but if we allow a breech of rules for them, who is to stop world leaders from convicting others of crimes that didn't exist as crimes at the time they were committed.

 

[Captain Kremmen]

Your opening post is cut and paste.
There are links that don't work.

Even so, I agree that the trial of a very old man is cruel.
Have more mercy on him than he did on others.

The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre confirmed Sunday that Laszlo Csatary, accused of complicity in the killings of 15,700 Jews, had been tracked down to the Hungarian capital.

"I confirm that Laszlo Csatary has been identified and found in Budapest," the centre's director Efraim Zuroff told AFP.

Ten months ago an informer had provided information that allowed them to locate Csatary, 97, in Budapest, Zuroff told AFP by phone. They had paid the informer the $25,000 promised for such information, he added.

In September last year, they had passed on their information to the prosecutor's office in Budapest.

A statement released Sunday by the centre said Zuroff had "last week submitted new evidence to the prosecutor in Budapest regarding crimes committed during World War II by its No 1 Most Wanted suspect Laszlo Csatary."

The centre said the evidence "related to Csatary's key role in the deportation of approximately 300 Jews from Kosice to Kamenetz-Podolsk, Ukraine, where almost all were murdered in the summer of 1941."

Budapest's assistant prosecutor general, Jeno Varga, said: "An investigation is under way. The prosecutor's office will study the information received."

But Zuroff said in the Centre's statement: "This new evidence strengthens the already very strong case against Csatary and reinforces our insistence that he be held accountable for his crimes.

[Related: Hitler ordered Jewish officer to be spared]

"The passage of time in no way diminishes his guilt and old age should not afford protection for Holocaust perpetrators."

Zuroff told AFP that the British tabloid daily The Sun had photographed and filmed Csatary, having acted on the information that the Wiesenthal Center had released last September.

The online edition of the newspapers announced on Sunday it had found and identified Csatary.

When its reporters confronted him on his doorstep, he had denied any crimes and slammed the door in their faces, the paper reported.

This was the fourth time that The Sun had cooperated with the Centre to put pressure on officials who were dragging their feet to bring Nazi fugitives to justice, said Zuroff.

The Wiesenthal Centre has urged Hungarian prosecutors to put Csatary on trial.

[Slideshow: Rare color photos of Hitler's home]

They say he served during World War II as a senior Hungarian police officer in the Slovakian city of Kosice, then under Hungarian rule.

He was complicit in the deportations of thousands of Jews from Kosice and its environs to the Auschwitz death camp in the spring of 1944.

Csatary had treated the Jews in the ghetto with cruelty, whipping women and forcing them to dig holes with their bare hands, he added.

In 1943, a Czech court condemned him to death after a trial held in his absence. He had fled to Canada and had worked as an art dealer using a false identity, before being unmasked in 1995 and forced to flee.