By Sandor Peto

BUDAPEST, Feb 9 (Reuters) - A Hungarian court will decide later this month whether it can reopen the case of 92-year-old Sandor Kepiro, accused by Nazi hunters of war crimes committed in January 1942 in Novi Sad, Serbia.

The case has prompted concerns that Hungary is dragging its feet over war criminals and also charges in Hungary that the Socialist government is ignoring the issue for fear that similar pressure will emerge to prosecute communists.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center spotted Kepiro, a former gendarme officer who returned to Hungary from Argentina 10 years ago, in Budapest last year and called for his prosecution.

Kepiro denies he is a war criminal.

Citing court rulings from Hungary in 1944 and 1946, it said Kepiro took part in the killing of about a thousand civilians, Serbs, Jews and Roma, in Novi Sad in 1942 and in the later deportations of Jews to the Auschwitz death camp.

The first court ruling did not refer specifically to war crimes. Hungarians have lost it and are waiting for Serbia to provide a copy, Budapest Court spokeswoman Erika Biro said.

"We wait until February 16 ... and we will make a decision after that even if we don't get the ruling," she said.

Kepiro, who was then a lieutenant, denies that he committed or even witnessed any crimes, saying his job was supervising gendarme patrols in a three-day raid against partisans at the time of the massacres on Jan. 21-23.

"I'm sorry for them, innocent people died there," he told Reuters. "But I did nothing for which I should have been indicted. ... I don't know why they find out these impossible things, only because I was a police officer?"

The Wiesenthal Center believes the Hungarian government is covering up the issue and that evidence was destroyed.

Domestically, the issue is significant as Hungary has never prosecuted anyone for their role in maintaining the communist system for more than 40 years under which thousands were imprisoned, tortured or killed.

"Such proceedings will stir a negative feeling in Hungarian society and the right exploits that, (as) there are people among us who committed crimes under the communist dictatorship and have not been punished," said historian Krisztian Ungvary.

AlertNet news is provided by