Hungarian researcher threatened to kill Ukrainian diplomat

A Hungarian man, who threatened to kill a Ukrainian diplomat was sentenced to one-year imprisonment, the attorney general told MTI on Tuesday.

According to Gábor Medveczky’s statement, the Central Prosecutor’s Office indicted a middle-aged man, working in the field of humanities research in February 2021.

The man threatened to kill the first-class secretary and diplomat of Ukraine who served in Hungary twice.

Index writes that the indicted man was asked by the Ukrainian Embassy in Budapest to give a lecture on the 100^th anniversary of the founding of Ukrainian diplomacy.

The lecturer had submitted the draft of his presentation to the Ukrainian Embassy in Budapest before the event, but according to Gábor Medveczky’s statement, the embassy told the man that due to his subject choice, the lecture would be postponed and held at a later date as part of a linguistic conference.

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The news portal wrote that the indicted man, displeased with the decision of the Ukrainian Embassy in Budapest, wrote two e-mails five days apart, in Ukrainian, addressed to the embassy in which he threatened the first-class secretary and diplomat of Ukraine that he would kill him.

The incident happened back in February 2019, but the Budapest Regional Court only sentenced the accused man in August 2021.

He was found guilty of violence against an internationally protected person and received a three-month sentence which was suspended for one year.

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However, a review motion was initiated at the Budapest Court of Appeals to change the crime from violence against a person to preparation for murder and, therefore, asking the court to impose a harsher punishment; lengthening the prison sentence and extending the suspension as well as ordering a superintendent to the perpetrator.

According to Index, the Budapest Court of Appeals agreed to the motion of the General Prosecutor’s Office and found the perpetrator guilty of preparation for murder.

The court then proceeded to sentence him to one-year imprisonment suspended for two years, essentially elongating his imprisonment eightfold and doubling his suspension.