In one of last Nazi Holocaust era trials, 97-year-old Hungarian faces murder charges

One witness to the massacre, Lea Ljubibratic, told reporters that people were "thrown into the river under the ice. They would take people from their houses and shoot them in the street."

Kepiro was actually convicted of being involved in the Novi Sad killings by a court in Hungary in 1944, but his conviction was overturned. He was again convicted in 1946, by which time Hungary was ruled by Communists, but he somehow escaped to Argentina.

Reportedly, he returned to Hungary in 1996 and was ultimately located by the Simon Wiesenthal Center ten years later.

Kepiro told reporters in court that he is "completely innocent" and lambasted the trial as a "circus". After entering the court with the aid of a walking stick, he took a seat and held up a printed sheet of paper which stated: "Murderers of a 97-year-old man!"

"I am innocent and I am here on trumped-up charges," he said in court. "This trial is a terrible thing. There is no basis to this, everything is based on lies. The charges are lies, all lies. I knew nothing of the massacres. The soldiers told me nothing."

Kepiro has earlier sued the director of the Wiesenthal Center, Efraim Zuroff, for defamation, for calling him a ‘war criminal.” But that suit was dismissed.

While admitting he was present at Novi Sad at the time of the massacre as a gendarme captain in Hungary's fascist forces,

Kepiro claims he merely helped to arrest civilians, and took no part in the killings.

"It's clear that this is one of the last major trials of Holocaust-era war criminal suspects," Zuroff told reporters. "This is the first trial of a Hungarian war criminal and since Hungary has collaborated with Nazi Germany, it's very important it takes place. There can be no clemency, no sympathy and no ignoring of the facts."