HUNGARY: ISRAELI PRESIDENT MOSHE KATSAV VISITS HUNGARY AMIDST REPORTS OF ALLEGED TERRORIST PLOT TO ATTACK HIM

Record ID: 400152

  • Title: HUNGARY: ISRAELI PRESIDENT MOSHE KATSAV VISITS HUNGARY AMIDST REPORTS OF ALLEGED TERRORIST PLOT TO ATTACK HIM
  • Date: 13th April 2004
  • Summary: (EU) BUDAPEST, HUNGARY (APRIL 13, 2004) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. WIDE OF GUARD OF HONOUR AND ISRAELI AND HUNGARIAN PRESIDENTS OUTSIDE GOVERNMENT BUILDING 0.09 2. VARIOUS OF ISRAELI PRESIDENT MOSHE KATSAV (LEFT) AND HUNGARIAN PRESIDENT FERENC MADL STANDING TO ATTENTION 0.28 3. WIDE OF PRESIDENTS WALKING DOWN RED CARPET AND REVIEWING TROO
  • Embargoed: 28th April 2004 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: BUDAPEST, HUNGARY
  • Country: Hungary
  • Reuters ID: LVA49QMHSM8HIWL3OP15EML3CQ0Q
  • Story Text: Israeli President Moshe Katsav visits Budapest amid
    suspicions of a plot to attack him.




    Israeli President Moshe Katsav met Hungarian President
    Ferenc Madl in Budapest on Tuesday (April 13).

    Katsav was in the Hungarian capital to attend the
    opening of a new Holocaust Memorial there on Thursday
    (April 15).

    The Israeli president's visit was however marred by an
    alleged plot to attack him during his visit.

    Media reports early on Tuesday suggested that Katsav
    was the target of three Arab nationals detained in Hungary
    on suspicion of planning a "terrorist act", Israel Radio
    said.

    But later on Tuesday Hungarian police said the arrests
    were not linked to Katsav's visit.

    "There is no connection whatsoever between the Israeli
    president's visit and the particular police action taken
    today," Laszlo Salgo, chief of the national police, told a
    news conference. Police sources said earlier they had
    detained three Arabs suspected of planning to blow up
    Budapest's new Holocaust Memorial Centre in a "terrorist
    act" possibly linked to Katsav's visit.

    Attila Petofi, Deputy Director of the National Bureau
    of Investigation, told a news conference there was
    substantial information the 42-year-old dentist of
    Palestinian origin planned to blow up "a Jewish museum",
    but he did not specifically say that was the new Holocaust
    Memorial Centre.

    Police said they had detained two other men, in
    connection with other crimes. They said the Palestinian man
    had wanted to buy explosives from one of these two, and had
    wanted to commission the other to blow up the Jewish
    museum.

    Police also said they had questioned two other people,
    both Syrians, who may have wanted to supply explosives to
    the Palestinian. They were being questioned as witnesses
    but their legal status was pending further consideration,
    police said.

    Katsav will visit the Holocaust Memorial Centre on
    Thursday to mark the 60th anniversary of the day Hungary's
    pro-Nazi regime started rounding up Jews to confine them in
    ghettos.

    Hungary recently converted a disused synagogue in
    downtown Budapest into the memorial centre to more than
    500,000 Hungarian Jews who perished during World War Two.

    Before World War Two, Hungary had a Jewish minority of more
    than one million. It now numbers fewer than 100,000,
    but is still central Europe's biggest Jewish community.

    In May and June 1944, Hungarian authorities deported
    437,402 Jews to concentration camps, according to German
    records.

    The memorial centre is the fifth state-funded Holocaust
    museum in the world according to its creators, after others
    in Jerusalem, Washington, London and Berlin.


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