Syrian ‘terrorist’ to sue Hungary over 2015 riot conviction

BEIRUT: A Syrian man controversially jailed in Hungary for his role in a 2015 riot rejoined his family in Cyprus Saturday vowing to sue Budapest for wrongful conviction.
“I will take my case to the Hungarian Supreme Court to clear my name, and if necessary to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg,” 42-year-old Ahmed Hamed told AFP from his home in Cyprus.
Hamed spent four years in detention after a conviction denounced by rights groups and the international community.
He was convicted of using a megaphone to orchestrate violence and throwing stones at Hungarian police to force them to open the border with Serbia in September 2015.
Hamed admitted throwing stones at police but denied being a terrorist. He said he used the megaphone to calm down the crowd.
The clashes took place during the peak of Europe’s migration crisis, a day after Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s hardline anti-immigration government sealed the frontier with a razor wire fence.