Hungary: Police ups reward for information on Roma crime

MTI April 25 Hungary's national police chief told MTI on Saturday that he had increased the reward for information leading to the perpetrators of recent attacks against the Roma to 50 million forints.

Jozsef Bencze said the attacks committed against Roma in Nagycsecs, Tatarszentgyorgy and Tiszalok are connected and the perpetrators are believed to belong to the same circle. Instead of the 10 million forints reward that police offered in each of the cases, 50 million forints will be given to anyone supplying information that will lead to the perpetrators, he added. Bencze noted that two people were killed in Nagycsecs last November and a father and his five-year old son were shot dead in Tatarszentgyorgy in February. In the most recent attack, a Roma man was shot dead on Wednesday. The attackers left behind various traces, including two DNA samples, but these have not been found in the criminal registry, Bencze said. A team of 70 police officers are involved in the investigation, including highly experienced criminal experts, he added. Police have so far investigated as many as 10,000 people who were in the vicinity of the incidents, including 2,000 who were questioned, Bencze said. Hungarian police has also received much useful help from international experts in drawing up the suspects' profile, he added Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai said that the government will do all it can to assist the police and create law and order so that no one should have to live in fear in Hungary. He said that the killing of a Roma citizen in Tiszalok was part of a series of shameful acts, and amounted to an offense against the whole of the Hungarian Republic.