'Most-Wanted Nazi' Dies Awaiting Trial—at 98

A onetime most-wanted Nazi war crimes suspect, Laszlo Csatary, has died at age 98, the BBC reports. The Hungarian was awaiting trial when he died in a hospital in his home country. "He had been treated for medical issues for some time but contracted pneumonia, from which he died," says his lawyer. Csatary is accused of sending 15,700 Jews to death camps, but he said he wasn't directly involved in war crimes; rather, he claimed he served as a go-between for Hungary and Germany.

Hungarian prosecutors said in June that Csatary ran an internment camp in what is now Slovakia. He beat prisoners and "deliberately provided help to the unlawful executions and torture committed against Jews," prosecutors said. In 1948, he received a death sentence in Czechoslovakia. Following World War II, he became an art dealer in Canada. His Canadian citizenship was revoked and he disappeared in 1997; the British Sun newspaper found him in Hungary last year. "It is a shame that Csatary, a totally unrepentant Holocaust perpetrator who was finally indicted in his homeland for his crimes, ultimately eluded justice and punishment at the very last minute,'' says the head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. (More Laszlo Csatary stories.)