Police guard the route of a Hungarian Roma march to protest against ultra-right-wing nationalists in Budapest on September 20, 2008. Four Hungarian men were found guilty Tuesday of killing six Roma including a five-year-old child in a wave of brutal racially-motivated attacks between 2008 and 2009.
BUDAPEST August 6- Four Hungarian far right extremists were sentenced to jail Tuesday over the killings of six members of the Roma minority, including a child, in a wave of racist attacks using guns, grenades and Molotov cocktails.
A Budapest court sentenced brothers Arpad Kiss and Istvan Kiss and Zsolt Peto to life for the murderous spree between 2008 and 2009, while their driver Istvan Csontos received 13 years as an accomplice.
The four men, who hatched their plans in a pub in Debrecen in northeast Hungary, are hard core football fans with neo Nazi links.
They showed no emotion as the verdicts were handed down.
In a case that has shocked Hungary, the gang killed six people and left another five seriously injured, all ethnic Roma, in a spree of violence lasting 14 months.
“Nazi killers!” shouted some people gathered outside the court for the verdict.
Starting in July 2008, the Kiss brothers and Peto, driven by Csontos, carried out nine brazen night time assaults on Roma living in villages in northeastern and central Hungary.
In one of the most gruesome attacks, a Roma father and his five year old son were gunned down as they tried to flee their house, which the gang had set on fire.
In another incident, a woman was shot in her sleep.
The gang’s motive was to provoke a violent reaction from the Roma and spark inter ethnic conflict, prosecutors said.
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