From The Oz:

Trial will kill me, says Nazi suspect
May 01, 2008

PERTH grandfather and accused Nazi war criminal Charles Zentai says he is sick and would not survive being sent to stand trial before a Hungarian military tribunal.

Mr Zentai, 86, is wanted in Hungary for allegedly torturing and murdering 18-year-old Jewish man Peter Balazs in Budapest during army service in World War II.

Last month, he lost a constitutional challenge in the High Court against the power of state magistrates to rule on extradition matters, and will now face the Perth Magistrates Court on May 20 for a hearing allocation date on his extradition.

Mr Zentai’s son Ernie Steiner says his father has fibrillation, a heart rhythm disorder, and an unidentified blockage in the brain which could be responsible for his two or three mini-strokes every week.

The octogenarian also has peripheral neuropathy which causes numbness in the hands and feet and can lead to diabetes.

Mr Zentai today said he was too sick to be sent to Hungary for trial.

“I probably wouldn’t come back, wouldn’t come out of it alive,” he told ABC radio.

“I don’t think so.”

Mr Steiner has also questioned whether his father would get a fair trial before a Hungarian military tribunal.

If the Perth Magistrates Court rules that Mr Zentai’s case meets the terms of the Extradition Act, it will then be up to federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland, or his delegate, to decide whether to surrender the Perth man to Hungary.

Mr Zentai has repeatedly denied the claims brought against him by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish human rights organisation, and today again claimed his innocence.

“Definitely, I was not involved in any such activities,” he said.

“I never murdered anybody, particularly not Peter Balazs. No, definitely not, I’m innocent of that.”

Mr Zentai was this week ranked number seven of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s top 10 most wanted suspected Nazis.

The centre says he has been under investigation by Hungary’s Foreign Ministry since December 2004 on suspicion of killing Peter Balazs in 1944 for failing to wear a yellow star identifying him as Jew.

If Mr Zentai is extradited, it would be the first time an Australian faced a court charged with Nazi war crimes.

In 2001, Konrad Kalejs died before he could be extradited from Australia to face a trial over alleged war crimes as a Nazi collaborator in Latvia.