On September 16, 2015, hundreds of migrants gathered at the Röszke-Horgoš border crossing, demanding entry into the European Union through Hungary. Under existing EU law, specifically the Dublin Protocol, this demand was not only unfounded but illegal. When border authorities denied the crowd passage, the situation rapidly escalated into a violent riot. Border guards were pelted with stones, barriers were torn down, and chaos erupted at one of the EU’s external borders.
Amidst this chaos stood Ahmed H., a Syrian national residing legally in Cyprus, who had traveled to the Serbian-Hungarian border despite having no legal claim for asylum in Hungary. Video footage and police reports confirm that Ahmed H. took an active part in inciting the crowd. He used a megaphone to shout instructions to rioters and was seen throwing rocks at police officers. His involvement was not passive; it was leading, deliberate, and dangerous.
Hungarian courts later convicted him of acts of terrorism and illegal border crossing. In November 2016, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with the court ordering that at least two-thirds of the sentence be served before deportation. The terrorism charge was based on Hungarian law, which defines violent attempts to coerce the state as terrorism. The events at Röszke clearly met this standard.
Despite the evidence, the case became a cause célèbre among international NGOs, liberal media, and activist networks, many of which are funded by foreign donors. Outlets such as POLITICO Europe framed the incident as an overreaction by Hungarian authorities and portrayed Ahmed H. as a victim. However, they omitted critical facts: He possessed multiple passports under different names, made contradictory statements about his actions, and initially denied any violence until confronted with video proof.
The Hungarian government maintains that the Ahmed H. case symbolizes the broader threat posed by foreign-funded networks working to erode national sovereignty under the guise of human rights or democracy promotion. In this view, the events at Röszke were not spontaneous. Rather, they were part of a coordinated, ideologically driven pressure campaign to undermine border security and national decision-making.
In 2019, Hungary’s Supreme Court ruled that a lower court’s dismissal of the original verdict was procedurally unlawful. While this ruling did not directly affect the retrial, it reinforced the legal soundness of the original court process.
A decade later, the Battle of Röszke remains a defining moment in Hungary’s response to illegal migration and its broader efforts to protect national sovereignty. Ahmed H. was not a bystander. He was a ringleader in a violent attempt to breach Europe’s borders. The facts speak for themselves, even if some would prefer them to remain in the shadows.