Australian Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus is expected to reach a final decision next week on whether to extradite 87-year-old Charles Zentai to Hungary.
Zentai's conviction last year for World War II war crimes was upheld on Tuesday by Australian Federal Court Judge John Gilmour.
Zentai was accused of torturing and murdering 18-year-old Peter Balazs on November 8, 1944 in a Hungarian army barracks. Balazs was killed for not wearing the yellow star that labeled him as a Jew.
The suspected ex-Nazi appears on the Simon Wiesenthal Center's "10 Most Wanted" list. The organization said in a statement released Tuesday in Jerusalem by its chief Nazi hunter, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, that Zentai "participated in manhunts, persecution, and murder of Jews in Budapest in 1944."
The ruling by Judge Gilmour, which came following Zentai's conviction last year, clears the way for Australia to extradite him to Budapest to face trial on the charges. However, the Hungarian native will appeal one more time to an expanded court panel next week before Debus makes his final decision on extradition. Zentai has already spent three years fighting extradition.
"It is high time that he be tried in a court of law so that justice can finally be achieved," said Zuroff. "The memory of Peter Balazs and the incredible pain of his family deserve no less."
Zentai migrated from Hungary to Australia in 1950.