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Demo for the left-wing extremist Lina E. in June 2023 in Leipzig

Photo: CHRISTIAN MANG / REUTERS

In Hungary, a German man was sentenced to three years in prison for a series of violent attacks on real or alleged right-wing extremists. Nine people were injured in Budapest in the attacks last February, six of them seriously.

The public prosecutor's office accused the 29-year-old in the Budapest City Court of having founded an "organization that sympathized with left-wing extremist ideology" for the attacks.

The main defendant in this case is an Italian woman. She is accused of attempted life-threatening bodily harm. A German woman is co-accused.

The defendant admitted his guilt on the first day of the trial on Monday. »I apologize to the court and the public prosecutor. “I acknowledge my guilt and waive my rights in the proceedings,” the Hungarian newspaper “Blikk” quoted him as saying. The public prosecutor's office had requested three and a half years' imprisonment.

According to the indictment, the man and woman from Germany belong to the violent group of the German left-wing extremist Lina E. She was sentenced to five years and three months in prison by a court in Dresden last May for several attacks on right-wing extremists. The verdict is not yet legally binding.

The three defendants in Hungary are said to have traveled to Budapest in February to use violence against participants in an annual SS commemoration. Together with others, they are said to have mistreated people who they believed had come to the SS memorial with telescopic batons, hammers and lead gloves.

The Italian woman and her German co-defendant denied the crimes in court on Monday. The public prosecutor's office is demanding eleven years' imprisonment for the Italian woman and three and a half years for the German woman. In the case, Hungarian authorities are searching for 14 other suspected perpetrators, including ten Germans.

Every year on February 11th, Hungarian right-wing extremists - often with like-minded people from abroad - celebrate the so-called “Day of Honor”. It commemorates the unsuccessful attempts by allied German and Hungarian troops to break through the Soviet siege ring around Budapest on that day in 1945.

kha/dpa