BUDAPEST, Sept 30 (Reuters) – A Hungarian appeals court on Wednesday reduced the prison sentence of a German citizen convicted for assaulting suspected far-right sympathisers in Budapest in 2023 to seven years from eight.
The defendant, identified only as Maja T., was among a group of anti-fascist activists who travelled to Hungary to counter a far-right rally. Arrested in Berlin in December 2023, Maja T. was later transferred to Hungary to stand trial. A lower court handed Maja T. an eight-year sentence in February.
• 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 appeals court judge said the sentence was being reduced because for one of the two counts on which Maja T. was convicted, the defendant should be considered an accomplice rather than a co-perpetrator and should not be considered part of an organised criminal group.
• 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 of Fundamental Rights.
• Under former Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who was ousted in an April election, Hungary introduced anti-LGBTQ+ policies, including laws that Brussels says discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
• Authorities in Hungary 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, had told the court earlier that the accusations against them were political.
• 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; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
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