Sándor Képíró

Sándor Képíró (18 February 19143 September 2011) was a Hungarian gendarmerie captain during World War II accused of war crimes committed by Hungarian forces.

Wartime career A police officer in the Hungarian gendarmerie, by 1942 Képíró was serving in the region of Bácska (Bačka) (today divided between Hungary and Serbia), which had been transferred to Hungary as a result of the Axis invasion and partition of Yugoslavia. In January 1942 raids were conducted in several parts in the region, including Novi Sad, and an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 civilians, mostly Serbs and Jews, were rounded up and killed. Képíró took part in this rounding up and later admitted playing that part in the affair. In 1944 he was put on trial, with fourteen other Hungarian army and police officers, accused of taking part in the raids. The court found that he had been implicated in the round-up, but he was not severely punished.

Later events In 1948, the post-war Communist authorities in Hungary took Képíró's case back to court in his absence, relying on the evidence of a man called János Nagy, who claimed to have been a member of Képíró's platoon in 1942. Képíró later claimed that he had never heard of Nagy, but was found guilty and sentenced in his absence to fourteen years' imprisonment. It was later found that the testimony of Nagy had been obtained under torture by the communist secret service. but was dismissed two months later on the basis of the verdict of the wartime court in 1944. and because of Képíró's failure to appear in court.

On 14 February 2011, Hungarian prosecutors formally charged Képíró with war crimes. The case came to trial on 18 July 2011, when he was found not guilty by a Budapest court. After the not guilty verdict, László Karsai, the leading Hungarian Holocaust historian and son of a Holocaust survivor, said: "Honestly, I wish Zuroff would stop doing what he's doing. I mean: with this kind of methods he uses, with so little evidence, he tries to drag people through the mire. This can't be done to anyone, can't be done even to a former gendarmerie officer either.” Karsai accused Zuroff of being a hysterical, narcissistic Nazi hunter, working only to earn a good living, and claimed that the Wiesenthal Center made such publicity about the case in order to justify its own existence before its sponsors.

Képíró died in a hospital in Budapest at the age of 97. His death was reported by his family, and his lawyer, who said he believed the trial in the summer had contributed to his client's poor health. Zuroff said on his Facebook page, "our only consolation is that the trial has negatively affected Képíró's health."

Until 2011, Képíró was on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazi war criminals.