Liberals blame TEK for terrorists entering Hungary in 2015

Budapest, September 28 (MTI) – The Hungarian Liberal Party has blamed the ability of terrorists involved in the Paris and Brussels attacks to enter and stay in Hungary last year on counter-terrorism unit TEK’s “failure” to detect and identify them when they entered the country.

Citing unnamed law enforcement sources, the daily Magyar Idők reported on Tuesday that several perpetrators of the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks in November last year and March 2016 spent time in Budapest. The paper said the terrorists had used the so-called Balkan migrant route into Hungary.

Zoltán Bodnár of the Liberal Party told a press conference on Wednesday that if the government had fulfilled its international obligations to register migrants arriving in Hungary, “these terrorists would probably not have been able to roam free on the streets of Budapest.”

But in order to stir up fear over the migrant crisis, instead of registering these people, the government had “thrust” thousands of migrants onto Budapest and the country, Bodnar insisted.

Bodnár questioned the timing of Magyar Idők’s article, saying that it indicated that the government was “using every method it can” to “raise the level of fear” within the public.