Police moved in on Saturday evening to disperse a demonstration in central Budapest by the Hungarian Guard, a nationalist paramilitary group allied to the radical Jobbik party, according to dpa. On one city square, police responded with tear gas when some Guard sympathisers pelted them with plastic bottles and beer cans after being told to leave the area, the local news agency MTI reported. The news website index.hu reported that a member of a TV news crew was wounded when hit on the head by a flying beer bottle. Some 200 members of the uniformed group, which on Thursday lost an appeal against a court ruling that it must disband, had assembled in the capital. They were joined by Gabor Vona, who is the leader of both the Guard and the nationalist party Jobbik. The uniformed Guard members, sitting on the ground with arms linked, were separated individually by the police. Vona was among those taken away. The group had joined a previously announced demonstration by other far right groups who were protesting the arrest of Gyorgy Budahazy, a key figure in anti-government demonstrations and riots over recent years, who is now on remand on terrorism-related charges. Squares around Budapest were cordoned off by police on Saturday morning, disrupting traffic and confusing tourists. Police had announced on Friday that they would on Saturday stop and search anyone suspected of planning to cause disruption. Occasional demonstrations by far right groups have become a regular sideshow in Budapest since autumn 2006, which saw large public demonstrations and riots after the release on radio of a recording in which then prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany admitted to lying. Since then, sporadic protests, often ending with scuffles with the police, have been mainly confined to fringe nationalist groups. The nationalist Jobbik party repositioned itself as a mainstream political party after winning three of Hungary's 22 seats in the recent European Parliament election. Jobbik and Hungarian Guard leader Gabor Vona said after Thursday's court ruling that the Guard would continue in one form or another. The uniformed group was found guilty of violating the rights of Roma villagers during a rally against what it calls "Gypsy crime" in 2007.
