Police investigating woman who kicked migrants on video
VIENNA -- Prosecutors in Hungary have ordered police to investigate a camerawoman caught on video kicking and tripping migrants near the border with Serbia.
Chief Prosecutor Zsolt Kopasz said they suspect the camerawoman identified in Hungarian media as Petra Laszlo of disorderly conduct and that authorities in the southern city of Szeged are also considering more serious crimes in the case.
After several videos surfaced showing Laszlo kicking a young man and a girl, as well as sticking her leg out to trip a man running past with a young boy in his arms, she was dismissed from her job at N1TV, an Internet channel associated with Hungary's far-right Jobbik party, which wants all migrants deported.
The migrants were running from police to avoid being fingerprinted.
Tuesday's footage went viral internationally within hours on social media. The N1TV channel's editor, Szabolcs Kisberk, said in a statement that employment of the camerawoman had been "terminated with immediate effect." While not identifying her as Laszlo, he said she "behaved unacceptably" at a police-supervised collection point for Arabs, Asians and Africans crossing the border from Serbia near the village of Roszke.
In videos and images posted online by multiple videographers and photojournalists, Laszlo can be seen making sideways karate-style kicks into the knees of two people - a young man and a pony-tailed teenage girl - as they ran past her. Both stumbled but neither fell as Laszlo continued filming.
She also was seen filming a running man carrying a young boy in his arms - then sticking out her leg to trip him as he passed. The man and boy tumbled to the ground, the man falling on top of the child. The boy can be seen crying in apparent pain as the man leaps up to curse at the camerawoman, who continues to film him.
The footage trended on Twitter and was a favorite on YouTube.
Two left-wing opposition parties - former Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany's Democratic Coalition and the Dialogue for Hungary - both said Wednesday they would report Laszlo to police in hopes of getting her charged with assault, a crime with a potential prison sentence. Dialogue for Hungary lawmaker Timea Szabo said Laszlo demonstrated "the pits of human behavior."
The AP was unable to obtain a telephone number for Laszlo. A Facebook page attributed to Laszlo could no longer be found Wednesday. Emails to Kisberk and other N1TV staff members were not answered.
Tensions between asylum seekers and police have been running high for days near Roszke, where a cross-border rail line guides newcomers to a field where police instruct them to wait for buses that will carry them to a refugee registration camp. But the buses come infrequently, leaving hundreds stranded for hours or even overnight in the cold. For the past three days, hundreds of frustrated asylum-seekers have pushed through police lines and walked up the main motorway north to Budapest.
