An elderly Nazi war criminal was taken into custody on Wednesday in Budapest. Laszlo Csatary, 97, has been convicted in absentia and sentenced to death for war crimes in 1948, according to a spokeswoman, Bettina Bagoly, for the Budapest prosecutor who spoke with ABC News. The former Nazi “was accused with committing war crimes,” according to a statement released by the prosecutor’s office.
The prosecutors said the investigation is complicated by the age of the crime and that the crime was committed in Slovakia, witnesses are in Israel, some of the legal papers are in Canada, and the suspect is in Hungary. According to court documents, Csatary was a police trainee who was promoted to police chief in a concentration camp located in a brick factory in 1944. “In that position, [Csatary] regularly whipped the deported Jews with a dogs’ whip without any special reasons and irrespective of the assaulted people’s sex, age or health condition,” the court document said. “But what do you do with a 97-year-old man who was very, very sadistic 68 years ago?” asked Laszlo Karsai, Hungary’s top holocaust historian whose grandmother died in Auschwitz. Csatary was taken to an investigative judge on Wednesday where his house arrest was reportedly initiated.
