Hungary top court jails serial killers of Roma for life

28.1.16

Hungary top court jails serial killers of Roma for life - Channel NewsAsia - The killings came at a time when Hungary, a landlocked central European nation of 10 million, underwent economic and political crisis. Its gross domestic output plummeted, its government collapsed and the far-right Jobbik party rose to prominence.

The three perpetrators were Zsolt Peto and the brothers Istvan Kiss and Arpad Kiss, militants with skinhead pasts from eastern Hungary.

The country's top court passed the harshest possible sentence for a crime that a judge at a lower court said was a showcase to demonstrate that racist murders would incur the toughest penalties.

A fourth accomplice, Istvan Csontos, who drove the murderers on their criminal outings, got a 13-year sentence last year.

The string of murders played out gradually, with the country slowly realising that the perpetrators were the same people following a racist ideology. Several people, including Roma, were erroneously detained at early stages for the first attacks.

After several non-lethal attacks they committed their first murder in November 2008, killing two people.