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 The Geneva Conventions say that the death sentences should not simply be repealed but annulled altogether.