Convicted German neo-Nazi who is a former Red Army Faction terrorist arrested in Hungary after seeking asylum

The infamous German neo-Nazi Horst Mahler, convicted in his home country of Holocaust denial, has fled to Hungary, where he has applied for asylum. The German newspaper Mitteldeutsche Zeitung reported the news on 16 May, publishing a letter from him.

Mahler alleges that he has asked the “leader of the Hungarian nation, Viktor Orbán”, to grant him “asylum based on political persecution”. The Hungarian Police later announced they had arrested Mahler.

The neo-Nazi has been serving a 10-year sentence for denying that Jewish people were murdered en masse during the Second World War and for anti-Semitic incitement. Two years ago, the court released him from prison because he was gravely ill.

Mahler was released on condition that he return to prison by the end of 2016, but he did not. The Hungarian Police announced on their website during the afternoon of 16 May that they had arrested him at 13:45 in the border town of Sopron in the west of the country and taken him into custody.

The Hungarian Police have published no further details about the case. Mahler, who is now 81 years old, was among the founders of the left-wing terrorist group the Red Army Faction in 1970, which strove to destroy the German state by committing abductions and murders of business people and politicians.

Mahler later crossed over into the ultra-right camp. He has been repeatedly convicted of defamation and promoting Nazism.