Four Men Go on Trial in Budapest Over a Year of Attacks on Roma Families in Hungary That Killed Six People
The first day was taken up with reading the 90-page indictment. Prosecutors say the men set out to intimidate Roma by attacking homes in nine villages.
Published
Six Roma people, including a small boy, were killed in a year of attacks on Roma homes across Hungary. On March 25, 2011, four men accused over the attacks went on trial in Budapest.
The first hearing at the Pest County Court began at 9 a.m. and was taken up with reading the 90-page indictment, which the news site Index reported contained many details not previously made public. Brothers Árpád Kiss, 43, and István Kiss, 34, and Zsolt Pető, 34, were charged with murder and armed robbery committed as a group. István Csontos, 29, who prosecutors said drove in the last two attacks, was charged as an accessory. According to the indictment, the three main defendants decided around the turn of 2008 to carry out armed attacks on houses where Roma lived in order to intimidate the minority, and took seven guns in a March 2008 robbery of a hunter's family in Besenyszög.
Prosecutors say the attacks hit nine villages between July 21, 2008, and August 2009. In November 2008, József Nagy and his sister, Mrs. Tibor Nagy, were killed in Nagycsécs. On February 23, 2009, Róbert Csorba, 27, and his four-year-old son, Róbert, were killed as they fled their burning house in Tatárszentgyörgy, the indictment says. Jenő Kóka was killed in Tiszalök on April 22, and Mária Balogh was killed in her home in Kisléta in early August, when her 13-year-old daughter was gravely wounded. The four men had been arrested at a Debrecen nightclub on August 21, 2009. On August 6, 2013, the three main defendants were sentenced to life without parole and Csontos to 13 years, and the Curia, Hungary's supreme court, upheld the convictions on January 12, 2016.
Index's account of the indictment described the two people killed in Nagycsécs as a brother and sister, while RTÉ News reported in 2009 that they were a couple.
Sources
- The sentencing of the defendants in the attacks against Roma victims is binding, Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ)
- Egy megdöbbentő gyilkosságsorozat részletei, Index.hu
- Hungarian police say Roma murders planned, RTÉ News