A Witch Hunt: Éva Horváth’s Testimony in the Light of Hagyó vs Hungary

In January of this year, followers of the trial of Miklós Hagyó and 14 associates of the Budapest Transit Company (BKV) heard the testimony from defendant #6 Éva Horváth. Her testimony is not remarkable at this moment because she withdrew previous investigation testimonies. Nearly all of the defendants have in fact withdrawn their investigation testimonies citing that their accusations where made out of fear of harsher treatment from the investigators. 



No, Horváth’s testimony is that much more interesting today because of two things: her described experience in pretrial detention in a Hungarian jail and the recent ruling from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) about Hagyó’s pretrial detention circumstances.

In January, Horváth recounted the intense bigotry and inhumane conditions to which she was subjected because of her Jewish faith. Besides prison guards dumping trash in her cell and uniquely harassing her Jewish literature and personal belongings, Horváth claimed that she shared a 6×6 meter cell with others in which the temperature reached 59°C (130°F). She also claimed that guards tried to drug her using Rivotril without her consent. One Hungarian blogger writes about it here in English.


Horváth, who is accused of misappropriating public funds by creating “unnecessary” contracts between BKV and companies which were personally or professionally profitable for Hagyó, said in her testimony that she was never actually Hagyó’s colleague and that she “could not verbally disgrace” him.


In the wake of ECHR’s decision in Hagyó vs Hungary, where the Court found the Hungarian judicial system in violation of multiple basic rights established and protected by the European Convention on Human rights, the credibility of Horváth and her nightmarish claims are certainly more reasonable.


I have been documenting this trial for approximately eleven months. Since the beginning I have heard critics say that Hagyó and the other suspects were corrupt socialists, living relics from the haunting past of Soviet-imposed communism. I have also heard the few supporters say that Hagyó and others have become entangled in a political witch hunt. As Horváth described in her testimony, “[The trial is] as in the Middle Ages, when they had thrown someone into the water and then, if she came up, she was a witch, and was burned to death, and if she drowned, then of course they didn’t have to burn to her to death, and it was all the same, whether she’s guilty or innocent.”


According to Fidesz’s track record of over-reaching tentacles ensnaring the autonomy of institutions which were the checks and balances of Hungarian democracy, the overwhelming amount of evidence supporting a gravely corrupt and coercive investigation of this trial, and the obviously lacking material which supports any of the prosecutions accusations, the 15 defendants were thrown into the well. All of them have resurfaced, only to be tied to the stake.


Source: http://thehagyocase.wordpress.com/