Thousands of people gathered here to protest the acquittal of a Hungarian neo- Nazi leader who had been charged with inciting racial hatred.
Sunday’s demonstration came after a Budapest municipal court ruled last week that there was insufficient evidence to convict Albert Szabo, who openly declares himself the direct ideological heir of the man who led the Hungarian Nazis during World War II.
Szabo’s trial began in November, after he and five of his followers were charged with wearing Nazi uniforms and with displaying Nazi flags and other symbols at public demonstrations.
They were not charged with organizing anti-Semitic demonstrations, because such gatherings are not illegal under Hungarian law.
All six were cleared by the municipal court.
The state prosecutor announced that he would appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
After the trial, Szabo said in an interview on Hungarian radio, “Jews and Gypsies are over-represented in the economic and political life of Hungary.”
Szabo, 40, fled Hungary in 1956 when the country was under Communist rule.
When he returned here some five years ago, he founded the World National Popular Rule Party, which was patterned after the wartime Arrow Cross Party of Ferenc Szalasi.
Hungary had a pre-war Jewish population of nearly 1 million. About 90 percent of the Jews fell victim to the Holocaust under the Szalasi regime.
Szalasi, a Hitler collaborator, was executed after World War II as a war criminal.
Szabo’s acquittal prompted Sunday’s demonstrators to call for changes in Hungary’s hate-crimes statutes.
A new, comprehensive anti-hate bill that has been approved by the Hungarian government is expected to be brought soon before the Parliament.
The bill provides for prison terms of up to five years for anyone convicted of a crime motivated by ethnic, racial or religious hatred. It would also make Holocaust denial a punishable crime.
The leadership of Hungary’s 80,000-member Jewish community expressed hopes for the bill’s swift passage.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
