A Hungarian court has cleared a 97-year-old man of involvement in the massacre of more than 1,000 civilians in the Serb city of Novi Sad during World War Two, but opponents said they would try to overturn the verdict.
"The Budapest Metropolitan Court ... acquits Sandor Kepiro of the war crime charge brought against him," trial judge Bela Varga said, announcing a ruling which also cleared Kepiro of all related charges.
The verdict, greeted with applause by Kepiro's supporters, is subject to appeal. The full details of the ruling will be laid out in a separate session tomorrow.
Kepiro, a Hungarian national, who was under constant medical surveillance while the verdict was delivered, served as a gendarme during the war, when parts of Serbia were occupied by troops from Hungary, then allied with Nazi Germany.
More than 1,000 civilians - Serbs, Jews and Roma - were killed in the 1942 Novi Sad massacre, ordered in retaliation for attacks by partisans.
The prosecution had said Kepiro was involved in a series of events in which people were rounded up and sent to their deaths before a firing squad.
Kepiro was also charged with being a member of a squad that murdered people in their homes. He denied committing murder or knowing about the crimes at the time.
"I am innocent, I have committed no murders, no robberies, I only served my country," Kepiro said in a final statement read by an aide before the verdict.
Kepiro lived in Argentina from 1948 to 1996. He was spotted in 2006 in Budapest by the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center, which informed Hungarian authorities.
"Today's verdict laughs in the face of at least 1,246 victims of the raid of Novi Sad. We are going to do everything we can to overturn this verdict," the centre's Efraim Zuroff said after the verdict.
Serbia's war crimes prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic, who helped Zuroff bring the case against Kepiro in 2008, said he had expected a guilty verdict.
"I expected that the Hungarian court put an end to ugly times," Mr Vukcevic said outside the courtroom. "I was shocked with (the audience's) behaviour in the court and the fact that the verdict was greeted with applause. It was a nauseating scene."
Teodor Kovac, a Serb who survived the massacre in 1942, also said he was in shock over Kepiro's acquittal.
"I am in distress, I am bitter," he said in Novi Sad. "I am sure that a majority in Novi Sad feel the same, especially those who lost family members in the biggest massacre in this part of Europe at that time."
"Releasing someone just because he is old or some memories were lost is not a sufficient reason, not justified," said Noam Lior, an American engineering professor who survived the Novi Sad atrocities as a child.
Reuters