Hungary’s former PM Orban says he rebuffed secret police recruitment
Orbán says he refused recruitment and was later kept under constant surveillance as Hungary opens tens of thousands of secret police files.
- Hungary begins releasing tens of thousands of Communist-era police files in an online database today, enabling public searches of informers and collaborators. Former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban claimed state security services attempted to recruit him during military service, though he refused.
- Orban, whose 16-year nationalist rule ended in April, stated documents revealed that "informants were set upon us, and listening devices were installed in our workplaces, our homes — and even in our bedrooms." Prime Minister Peter Magyar pledged to open the archives.
- Investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi reported that former Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Németh claimed he was shown three handwritten intelligence reports allegedly authored by Orban in 1990 by Defence Minister Ferenc Kárpáti, though Németh could not independently verify authenticity.
- Historian Krisztián Ungváry cautioned against drawing conclusions, stressing that while Orban may have carried out intelligence tasks, available evidence suggests he was primarily a surveillance target. Files also indicate failed recruitment attempts in 1982 and 1988 under codename "Kurázsi."
- The online database allows citizens to search records of approximately 55,000 secret collaborators recorded between 1956 and 1989. Previously restricted to researchers and family members, the archives now enable Hungarians to confront their totalitarian past directly.
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Former Hungarian Prime Minister Miklós Németh claims to have received three handwritten agent reports from Viktor Orbán (Fidesz) in 1990. The opposition party Fidesz has called this a blatant lie.
The Hungarian government will publish Wednesday the names of more than 50,000 informants of the secret services associated with the political police during the communist dictatorship (1945-1989), reports on Tuesday the EFE and Reuters agencies. The day before the event, the former prime minister...
Viktor Orbán has said that the communist secret services in Hungary tried to recruit him as an informant during his regular military service, but he refused to cooperate. The former Hungarian prime minister has published documents from 1982 and the late 1980s to support his claims. “At the beginning of my military service, they tried to recruit me, but I refused, so the attempt was unsuccessful,” Orbán wrote. He said that after my refusal, he, h…
Hungary's ex-PM Viktor Orban releases Communist era secret police files, says he refused to become an informant
Credit: Facebook/FideszHungary is the last major former Soviet-bloc country in Central and Eastern Europe to fully declassify and publish comprehensive records of Communist-era secret police agents and informants.
Former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said Tuesday that his country's communist secret services tried to recruit him as an informant during his military internship, reports...
Hungary’s former PM Orban says he rebuffed secret police recruitment
BUDAPEST, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Hungary's former Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Tuesday that Communist secret services had tried to recruit him as an informer while he was doing his military service but he refused, and that he later became the targe...
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