(Newser)
–
Hungarian authorities have charged a 97-year-old man with war crimes, after a Jewish rights group fingered him as a former Nazi, accusing him of abusing and deporting thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. Prosecutors had Laszlo Csatary, aka Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary detained this morning, because they believed he was about to flee the country, the AP reports. Prosecutors say they arrested him at "an address to which he had no connection until now." They asked that Csatary be put under house arrest, and a judge obliged.
During the house arrest hearing, Csatary willingly recounted his Holocaust activities, but said he was only following orders. His "attitude toward some of his fellow men of a certain religion ... is not what we would consider normal," the chief prosecutor said. Authorities say he ran an internment camp where he "regularly" used a dog whip on Jewish detainees "without any special reasons." He was convicted in absentia in Czechoslovakia in 1948 and sentenced to death. Now, prosecutors have charged him with "unlawful torture of human beings," which carries a possible life sentence.
