BUDAPEST, Feb 4 (Reuters) – A German citizen was sentenced to eight years in prison by a Hungarian court on Wednesday for assaulting suspected far-right sympathisers in Budapest in 2023, as part of an anti-fascist group that had gone to Hungary to counter a far-right rally.
The German citizen, identified only as Maja T., was arrested in Berlin in December 2023 on a European arrest warrant and was subsequently transferred to Hungary.
The presiding judge found Maja T. guilty of “attempting bodily harm… as part of an organised crime group”.
According to the indictment, Maja T. was part of a far-left group that planned to take up an “ideological fight with violent attacks against sympathisers of the extremist right” with the aim of assaulting people with “various instruments capable of causing death.”
The case drew international attention when Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled in February 2025 that it had been unlawful to extradite Maja T., who identifies as non-binary, to Hungary, upholding her argument that the decision violated the European Union’s Charter on Fundamental Rights.
Under Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Hungary has introduced anti-LGBTQ+ policies, including laws that Brussels says discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Authorities in Hungary – an EU member but which has clashed with Brussels on a range of issues including LGBT rights and the rule of law – have given assurances that non-binary people are not subject to discrimination or violence in prisons there.
Maja T., who was one of several individuals to go on trial over the attacks, told the court that the accusations against her were political.
The German justice ministry said it had no comment.
The first accused in the trial was Italian teacher Ilaria Salis, who was released from house arrest in June 2024 after she was elected a member of the European Parliament. Prosecutors were seeking an 11-year sentence for her. Salis and her family said she was innocent.
(Reporting by Anita Komuves, additional reporting by Markus Wacket in Berlin; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
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