Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Saturday drew a direct link between immigration and an attack in Germany where a man drove into a Christmas market teeming with holiday shoppers, killing at least five people and injuring 200 others.
During a rare appearance before independent media in Budapest, Orban expressed his sympathy to the families of the victims of what he called the “terrorist act” on Friday night in the city of Magdeburg. But the long-serving Hungarian leader, one of the European Union's most vocal critics, also implied that the 27-nation bloc's migration policies were to blame.
German authorities said the suspect, a 50-year-old Saudi doctor, is under investigation. He has lived in Germany since 2006, practicing medicine and described himself as a former Muslim.
Orban claimed without evidence that such attacks only began to occur in Europe after 2015, when hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees entered the EU after largely fleeing war and violence in the Middle East and Africa.
Europe has in fact seen numerous militant attacks going back decades including train bombings in Madrid, Spain, in 2004 and attacks on central London in 2005.
Still, the nationalist leader declared that “there is no doubt that there is a link” between migration and terrorism, and claimed that the EU leadership “wants Magdeburg to happen to Hungary too.”
Orban’s anti-immigrant government has taken a hard line on people entering Hungary since 2015, and has built fences protected by razor wire on Hungary's southern borders with Serbia and Croatia.
In June, the European Court of Justice ordered Hungary to pay a fine of 200 million euros ($216 million) for persistently breaking the bloc’s asylum rules, and an additional 1 million euros per day until it brings its policies into line with EU law.
Orban, a right-wing populist who is consistently at odds with the EU, has earlier vowed that Hungary would not change its migration and asylum policies regardless of any rulings from the EU's top court.
On Saturday, he promised that his government will fight back against what he called EU efforts to “impose” immigration policies on Hungary.
