Sentence of Hungarian right-wing activist, terrorist reduced from 17 to 6 years

The appeals court of Budapest, acting as a court of second instance, on Thursday reduced the prison term of right-wing activist György Budaházy, convicted for terrorism and other crimes, from 17 years to six.

Two other defendants were handed a sentence reduced to five and a half years, while the sentences of four further defendants were reduced to five years and the sentence of one to two years. The court ordered that the defendants must start serving their terms without delay.

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According to the charges, Budaházy set up a terrorist organisation called the Hungarian Arrows to carry out attacks against lawmakers of the then ruling Socialist-Free Democrat alliance between 2007 and 2009. Budaházy and his accomplices were also charged with throwing petrol bombs at the homes of Socialist and Free Democrat politicians and their parties’ headquarters as well as Molotov cocktails at gay bars and outlets, such as a ticket office in Budapest’s 13th district.

In the summer of 2016, the municipal court of Budapest sentenced Budahazy to 13 years in prison. Of the 17 defendants, 15 were sentenced to between 5 and 13 years in prison each for terrorist activity. Last March, in the retrial of the case dismissed in 2018, the municipal court of Budapest sentenced Budaházy to 17 years in prison. Five other accomplices were handed prison sentences of more than ten years, and others of around five years.

In December, Katalin Novák, Hungary’s president, granted a pardon to seven of the 17 defendants in the case.