BUDAPEST (JTA) — Hungary’s Supreme Court upheld an order disbanding of the Hungarian Guard, the private army of the extreme nationalist Jobbik Party.
Wednesday’s decision was the third judicial ruling within a year making the openly racist paramilitary organization illegal, and exhausting all avenues of further appeal within Hungary.
Jobbik chairman Gabor Vona said following the ruling that the Guard would nevertheless continue to function pending an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
The order tio disband applies to both the Guard and the Guard Society to which it formally belongs. The Supreme Court said the organizations had abused their own charter, as well as the democratic right of assembly, by targeting and deliberately generating fear in racially defined Hungarian minority groups.
The Guard is modeled after the wartime Hungarian Arrow Cross bands that killed thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. Its ranks include uniformed units of the “Guard Gendarmerie,” modeled after the main Hungarian law enforcement agency assisting Nazi Germany in the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews, as well as Gypsies, to Auschwitz.
Jobbik has achieved major electoral gains in Hungary during the current recession and is widely expected to emerge as a substantial parliamentary force in the 2010 national vote.
