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Written by Robert Hodgson
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Thursday, 11 June 2009 |
Jobbik’s Krisztina Morvai told a press conference in Budapest last Thursday that she intends to file a complaint to the authorities over the Olaszliszka court case, as dozens of Roma were involved in the lynching, but only eight people had faced charges.
In a sentence passed in the Olaszliszka murder case a week earlier by a Mikolc court, one man was sentenced to life imprisonment for his part in the lynching of a teacher who was pulled from his car and murdered in the north eastern village of Olaszliszka in October, 2006.
Szögi Lajos, a 44-year-old teacher from a nearby town, was beaten to death in front of his two children by a mob of enraged villagers after he had bumped into the convicted man’s 12-year-old daughter as he drove through the village. The girl fell into a roadside ditch but suffered no significant injuries, and a subsequent forensic examination of the teacher’s car found no evidence of impact. Described by the judge as “a menace to society with a string of previous convictions”, the girl’s father will spend a minimum of 30 years in jail. Seven other defendants in the case were also sentenced for joining or abetting the attack. Five of them, including the girl’s mother and older brother, were given 15-year prison sentences, while two others who were minors at the time of the murder were sentenced to ten years in a juvenile detention centre.
The Borsod county prosecutor’s office last week said it would appeal, demanding that four of the five who received 15-year terms get life sentences.
Passing sentence, the leading judge in the trial, Attila Czibrik, described how the victim had been systematically beaten for 10 to 15 minutes before he died, as reported by the news agency MTI. “The victim was subjected to a prolonged, extraordinarily brutal beating, entirely devoid of humanity,” Czibrik said.
The case caused shockwaves across the country and, as the attackers were Roma, led to a dramatic increase in racial tensions between Hungary’s majority population and its ethnic Roma minority, and has been used by the extreme right to drum up support for its anti-Roma stance. The controversial far-right paramilitary group, the Hungarian Guard, even staged an anti-Roma demonstration in Olaszliszka as part of a self-styled crusade against what it calls “gypsy crime”. In the past 18 months there have been over a dozen armed attacks against Roma homes across Hungary, and since November five Roma have been killed in three separate attacks in which guns and petrol bombs were used. Similarities of method suggest the cases are linked, and the murders are thought to have been racially motivated.
The father of the murdered man, along with his granddaughter, who witnessed her father being killed, were in court. The man’s father said he was satisfied that the court had imposed the maximum possible penalty, but added that he would like to see the death penalty reinstated, as imprisonment “cannot be compared” to how his son suffered. The verdict is subject to appeal.
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