Police blunder: four teenagers spend 72 hours in custody by mistake

The two teenage boys who are now suing the police. Source: a screenshot from the report of RTL Híradó.

The four teenagers had nothing to do with the crime, yet they spent 72 hours in custody on the suspicion of robbery. This happened two years ago. Now, the four teenagers are suing the police with the help of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee.

A huge mistake

Four adolescents spent 72 hours in a cell on the suspicion of robbery, even though they had nothing to do with the crime. The unfortunate case happened two years ago, and with the help of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, they have now filed a lawsuit against the police, seeking an apology and grievance fee.

Three teenage boys and a girl were mistakenly taken into custody by the police, two of whom are now suing the District III Police. According to RTL Híradó, the group of four were walking along a shopping street in Békásmegyer when, not far from them, a group of four men beat and threatened a man with a knife and took HUF 80,000 (EUR ~210) from him.

Read also: What’s next?! 35% increase in the Budapest rental market

Confusion

The teenagers were then caught by the police and taken into custody on the suspicion of robbery. However, they were not the culprits. Later, it became clear from the investigation that there was no reasonable suspicion that they were the ones who had committed the robbery.

The police may have confused the two groups.

As we can read in Telex’s article, the boys, aged just 15, were handcuffed and kept on a lead.

“After they put the handcuffs on us, they tied a lead to us and dragged us like dogs,”

one of the teenagers involved recalled to RTL Híradó.

Read also: Hungarian police officers’ starting salary is lower than 520 EUR/month!

No answers

During the 72 hours they spent in custody, they were not given any answers to any of their questions, nor were they told why they were taken to custody. However, according to the description in the file of the investigation, the culprits were middle-aged, stubbled, heavily-built men.

Telex said that the teenagers could not have reached the place where they were arrested if they had been the culprits anyway because they had too little time. But the investigators seem to have overlooked this fact.

“I asked them why they were taking me in or what I had done and to leave me alone. They said I knew exactly why they were taking me in. We didn’t get any definite answers during the whole time we were detained, no matter what we asked,”

said Gergő, one of the boys.

With the help of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, two of the four young people have now filed a personal rights lawsuit against the police for their “unlawful detention and humiliating handcuffing”.

Answer from the police

The Budapest Police Headquarters told RTL Híradó that, in accordance with the law, “handcuffs were only used when the young people were taken into custody”. They also said that they had to be detained because there was a risk, for example, of escape and of making it difficult to prove that they are guilty.