Hungarian police have accused four men of planning racist attacks on the Roma minority over 13 months in which six people were murdered.
Four members of a gang suspected of being behind the killings were arrested in a bar in the city of Debrecen last Friday after a hunt in which US Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and experts from other European police agencies were called in to help.
National Investigation Office chief Attila Petofi told a press conference that DNA evidence had linked two suspects to the crimes which terrorised Hungary's Roma community. He said DNA evidence against the other two was being analysed.
Six hunting rifles and other guns, ammunition were seized, Mr Petofi said.
The four men are aged between 28 and 42, the police chief added. They include a pastry chef, a sound technician and a soldier - all had been working at the bar where they were detained.
‘The execution of the attacks was characterised by strategic planning and professional experience in arms use,’ Mr Petofi told reporters.
‘The suspects' motivations are presumably racist, but we can clearly state this only if the suspects explain their actions,’ he said.
Over 13 months, shots were fired at 16 houses ‘threatening the lives of 55 people’, Mr Petofi said.
Eleven petrol bombs were thrown at four houses.
The first fatal attack came in November last year when a Roma couple were killed in Nagycsecs by a gang armed with shotguns and a Molotov cocktail.
A young Roma father and his five-year-old son were shot dead in February this year in front of their house, which was subsequently set on fire, in Tatarszentgyorgy, south of Budapest.
A Roma man was shot dead in front of his home in April in Tiszalok, southeast Hungary.
This month, a woman was shot dead while sleeping in her house in the eastern town of Kisleta. Her 13-year old daughter was seriously injured.
After the murder in Kisleta, police doubled the reward for information to €372,000.
It increased a special team working on the cases to 120 detectives, and contacted Europol, Interpol and the FBI, which helped to profile suspects, Petofi said.
The Roma accounts for almost a tenth of Hungary's 10 million-strong population.
Antagonism towards them has increased as the economic downturn has hit the country.
