museum in Budapest where Israeli President Moshe Katsav arrived for a three day visit. The High Commissioner of the Hungarian National Police, Laszlo Salgo, said special forces in cooperation with the country’s secret service raided five locations in the Hungarian capital earlier in the day and arrested three terrorist suspects of Arab origin.
He identified the "main suspect" as a 42-year Hungarian citizen of Palestinian descent, who is the Imam of a small Islamic community in Hungary’s capital. The two others were described as Syrians. The three men, whose names were not released, have been charged with involvement in planning a terrorist attack, which under Hungarian law, is punishable by up to ten years imprisonment.
"The perpetrators wanted to blow up a Jewish museum. Not a specific one, but in general terms a Jewish museum. There are not too many (here) but some of them can be found in Hungary," Salgo said. He and other officials denied reports the three planned to assassinate Israeli President Katsav, who was due to open the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Budapest later this week.
However Salgo stressed the president’s visit was one of the main reasons why the police speeded up the tracking and capture of the suspects. "This (visit) was one of the facts we took into consideration." he said.
"After Madrid, this information is very sensitive, and in the morning my colleagues decided to get it into force. I mean the pre-trial arrests and the house searches. They (the police) did not expect more information, taking into consideration the stage of the…undercover investigation."
ANTI SEMITISM
Salgo was referring to the March 11 bombing of trains in Madrid that killed 191 people. Reports about the planned attack on a Jewish museum come amid Israeli and international concern about anti Semitism in Hungary, which prepares to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Holocaust when an estimated 600-thousand Hungarian Jews were killed.
With the attack the suspects apparently wanted to send a message to both Israel and Hungary, which supports the U.S.-led military operations in Iraq with hundreds of troops on the ground.
Hungarian investigators have not ruled out that the men, who have been monitored since November 2003, had links with the terror group al-Qaeda, which claimed responsibility for the September 11 attacks in the United States.
PUBLIC FEARS
However the Political State Secretary of the Hungarian Interior Ministry, Tibor Pal, tried to play down public fears at a news conference. He said that "Hungary and the Hungarian people are not targets of terrorist organizations, as we haven’t been targets so far."
Yet the arrests were expected to add to political pressure on the Hungarian Socialist-led government, which is a staunch supporter of the U-S-led operations in Iraq, to withdraw its forces from that country, something it has refused to do so far.
Hungarian and Israeli officials have told reporters that despite the discovery of a terrorist plot the Israeli president’s visit to Hungary would continue as scheduled amid tight security involving many uniformed and undercover police forces.
