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Hungarian former official Biszku gets suspended sentence

Xinhua, December 18, 2015 Adjust font size:

A Budapest court, in a Thursday decision, found 94-year-old Bela Biszku guilty of war crimes but absolved him of responsibility for two shooting incidents into crowds that killed 49 decades ago, Hungarian News Agency MTI reported.

The essence of the original charge against him was that he participated in organizing and heading the special police force that took control of Hungary following defeat of the 1956 incident.

Biszku now received a two-year suspended sentence after a Court of Appeals nullified a previous primary court verdict of May 2014 that found him guilty of ordering the shootings and sentenced him to five and a half years in prison.

The Budapest Municipal Court now found that there was insufficient evidence to prove that Biszku had been responsible for the shootings.

Biszku had been a senior official in Hungary as of the 1950s. He became interior minister in 1957 and qualified as a hard liner, who was gradually removed from power in the 1970s. Endit