Sandor Kepiro was on July 18 acquitted by a court in Budapest of complicity in war crimes committed in Serbia in 1942.

Kepiro, 97, was standing trial for the murder of 35 civilians in Novi Sad during the Second World War, and was brought to the court on July 18 in an ambulance, having spent the last week in hospital.

He stood trial for taking part, as the captain of the occupying Hungarian gendarmerie, in the 1942 fascist raid on Novi Sad, during which at least 1,200 civilian Jews and Serbs were killed. He was suspected of having personal responsibility for the deaths of 35 civilians whose murder he was suspected of ordering.

The prosecution announced that it would lodge an appeal against the acquittal of the former Hungarian gendarmerie officer.

Efraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, told journalists that he could not believe what had just happened. Zuroff held a black and white photograph depicting a girl who he claimed was one of Kepiro's victims in the raid on Novi Sad.

Serbian Special War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic also said that the verdict had not lived up to his expectations.