The Fidesz and KDNP parliamentary group leader called András Baka, elected head of state on Tuesday, unworthy of the office of President of the Republic, in a post on Facebook.

Fidesz and KDNP members of parliament did not attend the election and inauguration of the new head of state in the National Assembly, but instead laid a wreath in Tata, at the memorial plaque of the martyrs of the 1956 revolution, commemorating the victims of the Tata volley.

János Bóka, the Fidesz parliamentary group leader, spoke in a video uploaded to Facebook from the event about how, in Hungary, two important consensuses had existed right up until the Tisza government came to power: first, that Hungary is an independent, democratic rule-of-law state, and second, that modern Hungary is the spiritual heir of the 1956 revolution.

With the Tisza Party coming to power, both consensuses had collapsed, the group leader stressed, adding that they do not regard András Baka as their President of the Republic.

Bence Rétvári, also in a video uploaded to Facebook, stated that András Baka is not worthy of being President of the Republic of Hungary, because he who “did not side with the revolutionaries in Strasbourg” does not embody the unity of the nation.

The legal proceedings that led to the Strasbourg ruling mentioned by the politician were initiated following the Supreme Court’s judgment of 8 November 2001. The court sentenced János Korbely, a retired lieutenant colonel who was 72 years old at the time, to five years’ imprisonment in the criminal case concerning the 1956 Tata volley fire, which claimed three lives. According to the established facts, on 26 October 1956, Captain János Korbely led approximately 15 officers armed with submachine guns, light machine guns, and hand grenades to the Tata district police headquarters in order to retake the building from the insurgents; there he ordered fire and fired himself, as a result of which three people were killed and three were wounded.

In 2001, the Supreme Court classified János Korbely’s act as a crime against humanity committed through the intentional killing of multiple persons, and imposed its sentence on that basis.

In a case brought before the European Court of Human Rights, based in Strasbourg, the judges — among them András Baka, who was at the time Hungary’s member of the court — examined whether the act truly met the definition of a crime against humanity, or whether it was “merely” homicide, which would by then have been statute-barred and therefore unpunishable. In making this assessment, they focused primarily on whether Tamás Kaszás, one of the shot rebels, could be considered in the specific circumstances to be a person who had previously “laid down his weapon” — because if so, his shooting would not constitute simple homicide but rather an imprescriptible crime against humanity. The Strasbourg court did not find it provable that Kaszás had reached for his pistol in order to hand it over.

In its judgment delivered on 19 September 2008, the Strasbourg court ruled in favour of János Korbely and declared that a crime against humanity had not been committed, and that the conviction handed down by the Supreme Court in 2001 contradicted Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides that no punishment shall be imposed in the absence of a criminal offence. The Strasbourg court reached its decision by eleven votes to six, with András Baka voting with the majority.

Artificial intelligence was used for the translation of parts of the original Hungarian text.