Most wanted Nazi suspect found in Budapest

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The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center confirmed on Sunday that Laszlo Csatary, accused of complicity in the killings of 15,700 Jews, had been tracked down to the Hungarian capital.

Ten months ago an informer provided information that allowed them to locate Csatary, 97, in Budapest, the center said by telephone. They had paid the informer the $25,000 promised for such information.

In September last year, the center passed on their information to the prosecutor's office in Budapest.

The center said the evidence "related to Csatary's key role in the deportation of approximately 300 Jews from Kosice to Kamenetz-Podolsk, Ukraine, where almost all were murdered in the summer of 1941".

The British tabloid The Sun had photographed and filmed Csatary, having acted on the information that the center had released last September.

The online edition of the newspaper announced on Sunday it had found and identified Csatary.

When its reporters confronted him on his doorstep, he denied any crimes and slammed the door in their faces, the newspaper reported.

The center says Csatary served during World War II as a senior Hungarian police officer in the Slovakian city of Kosice, then under Hungarian rule.

He was complicit in the deportations of thousands of Jews from Kosice and its environs to the Auschwitz death camp in the spring of 1944.

Csatary treated the Jews in the ghetto with cruelty, whipping women and forcing them to dig holes with their bare hands.

In 1948, a Czech court condemned him to death after a trial held in his absence. He fled to Canada and worked as an art dealer, using a false identity, before being unmasked in 1995 and forced to flee.

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Lee Hannon is Chief Editor at China Daily with 15-years experience in print and broadcast journalism. Born in England, Lee has traveled extensively around the world as a journalist including four years as a senior editor in Los Angeles. He now lives in Beijing and is happy to move to China and join the China Daily team.