Hungary’s supreme court to look into undoing post-1956 death sentences

Budapest, April 25 (MTI) – The Kúria, Hungary’s supreme court, will explore its legal options for annulling the death sentences handed down by the communist regime after the failed 1956 uprising, the daily Magyar Idők said on Monday.

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the revolution, Hungary’s judiciary and various legal institutions will examine a number of sentences from the era, including the trial of Imre Nagy, Hungary’s prime minister during the uprising.

Although there are several different viewpoints among those involved in the investigations about what to do with the sentences, the paper said the dominant point of view seems to be that the 1949 Geneva Conventions are to be applied, as Hungary’s supreme court had originally declared. The Geneva Conventions say that the death sentences should not simply be repealed but annulled altogether.

Kúria deputy head István Kónya told the paper that the upcoming anniversary of the revolution warranted a historical analysis of the political retaliation that followed the fighting.

Earlier analysis of the communist regime’s sentences indicated that rulings that were meant to look like justice were actually acts of political murder, Kónya said.

The trials that ended with death sentences cannot truly be considered legal proceedings but rather retaliation. The rulings violated human rights and therefore cannot be considered justice, he said. The Kúria is now looking to find a legal framework within which it can declare this.

The communist regime handed down more than 200 death sentences after the 1956 revolution, the paper said.

Photo: MTI

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters