News

July 5, 2009

A leader of Hungary’s ’56 revolution dies

The Associated Press

BUDAPEST, Hungary — Bela Kiraly, one of the military leaders of Hungary’s short-lived anti-Soviet revolution in 1956, has died, the Hungarian government said. He was 97.

A brief defense ministry statement on Kiraly’s death did not provide a cause of death or where and when it occurred. However, the daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet reported that Kiraly died Saturday morning in Budapest.

Kiraly served in the Hungarian army during World War II and later led its military academy.

In 1952, he was sentenced to death on trumped-up conspiracy charges by Hungary’s Stalinist regime, but the sentence was later commuted to life in prison.

The October 1956 revolution, aimed at overthrowing the communist regime, lasted less than two weeks before it was crushed.

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