HUNGARY pardoned the jailed leader of a far-right group convicted for attacks on politicians in the late 2000s on the eve of Pope Francis’s visit to Budapest beginning today.  

“The week of the papal visit is a special occasion for the head of state to exercise the power of pardon,” President Katalin Novak said late yesterday.  

The “wide pardon” included members of the defunct far-right Hunnia (Arrows of the Hungarians) paramilitary group, she said.  

Gyorgy Budahazy, 53, was handed a 13-year jail term in 2016 for acts of terror, along with 16 other militants.  

They were found guilty of violent attacks between 2007 and 2009, including firing bombs, missiles and throwing Molotov cocktails at the homes and offices of socialist and liberal deputies then in power.  

According to prosecutors, the group’s aim was to intimidate lawmakers to influence their votes.  

Hungary has not seen such sustained organised attacks in past decades, the prosecutor noted after the trial.  

Budahazy, who had said he was a victim of a “show-trial” left the prison overnight on horseback – a symbol among the far-right as a reference to the country’s rebellious past.  

In an interview with Hungarian tabloid Blikk, he promised to offer “a prayer of thanks” for the pardon during the Pope’s mass on Sunday.  

Opposition leader and former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany blasted the pardon as “crazy and dishonest”.  

Sandor Csintalan, a former socialist leader and victim of a Hunnia attack, called it “sacrilege”.  

Katalin Novak has made Gyorgy Budahazy “a national hero, a kind of Robin Hood”, he said. – AFP, April 28, 2023.