The Hungarian police have been accused by the victims’ relatives of being slow to investigate the killings, refusing for a long time to see any link or racial motive.
After one of the attacks officers failed to cordon off the crime scene for 12 hours, attorneys for the relatives say.
Police security was heavy inside and outside the court building for the verdict, which ends a two and a half year trial and comes a few days after the anniversary of the last attack on August 2, 2009.
All four admitted involvement in the attacks but pleaded not guilty to murder.
Hundreds of people gathered to hear the verdict, including several relatives of the victims, some wearing T shirts bearing pictures of the victims. One T-shirt read: “Their skin colour was their crime”.
Plagued by poverty and high unemployment and often shunned by the rest of society, Hungary’s Roma are often subjected to verbal and physical abuse.
The community makes up between five and eight percent of Hungary’s 10 million population.
The Roma have also been physically targeted by vigilantes, and are regularly vilified as criminals by the far right Jobbik party.
In January, Zsolt Bayer, a prominent journalist close to centre right Prime Minister Viktor Orban, equated Roma to “animals” who “shouldn’t be tolerated” and “should not exist”. His newspaper was later fined by the country’s media regulator.
Orban, a controversial figure whose detractors say he is eroding democracy in the EU member state, has been accused of presiding over a rise in anti Roma feeling and anti Semitism.
Zoltan Balog, minister for human resources, said Tuesday the case was “not a question of minority or majority” but of “human dignity”.
“No perpetrators of racist crimes can escape the law in Hungary, and especially savage murderers pay a worthy penalty for their deeds,” he said in a statement.
The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (HCLU) had warned Monday that the verdict would be crucial in determining how Hungary tackled racism in the future.
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