98-Year-Old Charged With Nazi War Crimes

Laszlo Csatary has made it almost to the century mark, but even that wasn't long enough to escape the Nazi hunters. The 98-year-old, who was arrested last year in Hungary after being named the Simon Wiesenthal Center's most wanted, was charged today with war crimes for his role in World War II, Reuters reports. Hungarian prosecutors say he assisted in murdering 15,700 Jews when he served in the Nazi police, and the Wiesenthal Center accuses him of helping deport Jews to Auschwitz, the BBC reports.

He is accused of running an internment camp, where he allegedly tortured and beat Jews, sometimes with his bare hands and sometimes with a whip. After the war, he lived as an art dealer in Canada until 1997, and was eventually found in Budapest. He was already sentenced to death, in absentia, in 1948 in a Czechoslovakian court; this trial will likely start within three months. Csatary says he was just an intermediary and is not guilty. (More Laszlo Csatary stories.)