The Szeged court of appeal has sentenced Ahmed H, a Syrian man charged with illegal border crossing and complicity in “acts of terrorism”, to five years in prison.
According to MTI, the sentence was a commutation of the first-instance sentence of seven years in a high-security prison. He can be released on probation after serving two-thirds of the sentence.
Ahmed H was charged after migrants broke the border fence at the southern Hungarian crossing at Röszke in September 2015, and has been in prison since.
The judge said that even though Ahmed H first warned the crowd at the border to stay calm, he later joined them throwing rocks at Hungarian police officers, injuring several, and then travelling into Hungary through a broken fence.
The judge said the court considered Ahmed H’s lack of police record a mitigating circumstance as well as the fact that he does not speak Hungarian and the long time he has already spent in prison.