PERTH (AFP)---An 86-year-old alleged war criminal accused of torturing and murdering a young Jewish man in World War II faced a last-ditch fight against extradition from Australia to Hungary on Monday.
Charles Zentai is accused of beating to death teenager Peter Balazs in 1944 in Budapest while serving as a soldier in the army of his native Hungary, then allied with Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.
The allegations against Zentai, which he denies, have been brought by the Jewish human rights organisation known for tracking down alleged Nazi war criminals, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
Zentai, having migrated to Australia after the war ended, was living quietly in the western Australian city of Perth before the Hungarian government began extradition proceedings in March 2005.
If Zentai is sent back to Europe, he would be the first Australian to ever be extradited over alleged war crimes.
He appeared Monday in the Perth magistrate's court after losing a series of appeals against Hungary's bid to extradite him.
Prosecutor Michael Corboy told the court that Zentai recognised Balazs, 18, who was not wearing the compulsory yellow star identifying him as a Jew, as someone from his own home town.
"He recognised this person as someone who resided in (Budafot, near Budapest)," Corboy told the court.
Zentai and two accomplices then took Balazs to a military base and assaulted him from three o'clock in the afternoon until the evening hours before throwing his body into the Danube river, Corboy said.
Outside the court Zentai's son, Ernie Steiner, issued a statement saying his father was completely innocent and had not been in Budapest on the day of Balazs' death in November 1944.
Steiner said his father was never a Nazi, detested the German occupation of Hungary and had many Jewish friends.
Zentai, who moved to Australia in 1950, is alleged to have escaped to Germany after the war by passing himself off as a refugee.
The court heard that criminal proceedings against him started in April 1948 when an arrest warrant was issued.
The hearing is expected to take three days.
