Hungarian Spectrum

Hungarian terrorists in Bolivia: Aftermath

Here and there one can still read in Hungarian papers about Előd Tóásó, one of the companions of Eduardo Rózsa-Flores currently awaiting trial in a Bolivian jail, but the intense interest in the alleged terrorist's past and eventual fate has subsided in the Hungarian media. However, in the last couple of days two articles appeared in Népszabadság (July 23 and July 24) about the alleged Bolivian-Hungarian terrorist Rózsa-Flores. The first was inspired by the utterances and writings of a Spanish newspaperman, Julio César Alonso, who came to know Rózsa-Flores in Tirana some fifteen years ago during "the first revolution" in Albania when Rózsa-Flores was working for the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. Alonso claims that Rózsa-Flores was a "psychopath" who went to Bolivia to foment a civil war. His assertions support the contentions of Evo Morales's government. But since Rózsa-Flores is dead most likely we will never know what he had in mind. We do know, however, that in Hungary he was involved with extreme rightist elements.

Alonso's description of Rózsa-Flores is not exactly complimentary. The story begins in Tirana, when the management of the hotel in which Rózsa-Flores was staying discreetly asked him to leave, allegedly because of a "murky affair." Apparently a battered child carrying hand grenades left his room. The next time the two men met was in Osijek, Croatia. Again a strange story emerges. Alonso was working with a television crew. At one of the check points a Croatian soldier offered to shoot a round of bullets into their car. No one would be hurt, but it would look good for the film they were working on. The soldier mentioned that he did it once before for fifty dollars at the request of "a Hungarian." Once Alonso arrived at the hotel he discovered Rózsa-Flores's car full of bullet holes. Surely, adds Alonso, Rózsa-Flores needed the bullet holes as a prop for some dramatic story.

Then for two months he disappeared, only to reemerge as the commander of an "international brigade" of volunteers on the Croatian side. Rózsa-Flores invited Alonso to visit the brigade which, in the company of a Swiss war correspondent, Christian Wurtemberger, he did. Wurtemberger earlier had met some mercenary types in the Karlovac region; among them were two Spaniards, one American, one Englishman, and three Hungarians. At the meeting the two war correspondents learned that all of these volunteers were trained in Hungary under the guidance of Colonel Attila Gyla.

At this point it is worth pausing momentarily to complain about the superficiality of Hungarian journalism. Admittedly the family name "Gyla" is a bit strange, but a little research reveals that this was the old spelling of Gyula, voivode of Transylvania at the end of the tenth century. The author of the article simply notes in parentheses that the name appeared in this form in the Bolivian press. Surely, he must think it was a misprint. But if he had done just a bit of research on the Internet he would have found Attila Gyla. For example in a United Nations report (1994) on Use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination (http://tinyurl.com/l5c5l5) Perhaps it is worth quoting some of the allegations:

"(Seventh allegation: For several months during 1991, Colonel Gyla Attila of the Hungarian Army was attached to the Croatian National Guard (CNG) headquarters for Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srem. He was in charge of planning and undertaking combat activities of CNG units in this area.)

"As for the seventh allegation, in the second half of 1991, Mr. Gyla Attila, a Hungarian citizen, volunteered for the Croatian Army in the region of Slavonia. Nothing is known about his rank as a colonel, however. In any case, he did not act as a commanding officer of CNG units.

"(Eighth allegation: At the end of 1991, the Osijek operations zone of the Croatian Army had an international brigade established by Eduardo Roses Flores, the Zagreb-based correspondent of the Catalonian paper 'La Vanguardia'. The brigade was composed of former French Legion combatants and mercenaries from the wars in the Middle East and Latin America. It often operated on its own in the region of Eastern Slavonia and committed massacres against Serbian civilians in the villages of Divos, Ernestinovo, Tenjski Antunovac and others.)"

Alonso's Swiss colleague, Wurtemberger, started to snoop around in Germany to learn the source of funding for this "international brigade." He discovered that the Bolivian consul in Germany was supplying them with weaponry, and apparently they received some drug money via Turkey. Soon enough the "international brigade" grew substantially: fifty French volunteers, recruited by Jean Marie Le Pen, arrived and approximately 110 more men came from "British, German, and Hungarian fascist organizations." Alonso claims that Rózsa-Flores "in those days was an out-and-out fascist who hated Jews, Arabs, Blacks, and Communists." Alonso alleges that Rózsa Flores was responsible for the murder of Cedomir Vukcovic at the instruction of General Branimir Glavas (http://tinyurl.com/ncujc5). Further accusations by Alonso follow. Apparently Wurtermberger tried to get close to the "international brigade" in order to learn more about the organization, but he "fell in battle." However, according to the Spanish journalist the body showed signs of torture and strangulation. When another journalist, Paul Jenks, showed too much curiosity about Wurtemberger's fate he received a bullet in his neck while he was photographing Serbian fortifications. Alonso is convinced that his own life was also in danger because he was in possession of Wurtemberg's computer. However, he and another journalist, Pinto Amaral, managed to escape. Alonso was told by the one American in the group, Colton Perry, that three people were responsible for Wurtemberger's death: the English "Frenchie," the Hungarian "László," and "MT" (most likely Mario Tadic, currently in jail in Bolivia). From here on Alonso didn't have first-hand knowledge of Rózsa-Flores's activities. However, he mentions Bosnia, Angola, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Sudan as stopping places of Rózsa-Flores.

It's hard to know how reliable Alonso's information is, but the stories from Croatia seem to have a ring of authenticity to them. Apparently, the Bolivian government would like to expand its investigation to Hungary. That might bring interesting results not only for the Bolivian but also for the Hungarian authorities. After all, some of the mercenaries in the Bolivian group still at large are Hungarians: Tibor Révész (founder of the Székely Légió), Gábor Dudog, Dániel Gáspár and Lajos Tamás. Perhaps with some help from Bolivia, the Hungarians could find out more about their own extremists, for example, the Arrows of the Hungarians. Hungary is a small country, and it is hard to imagine that these extremist groups weren't in touch with one another.

Hungarians in Bolivia

The Hungarian political scene is relatively quiet at the moment. The MSZP and SZDSZ caucuses are planning to do something against holocaust denial, but knowing the Hungarian Constitutional Court most likely nothing will come of it. Another Gypsy was killed, this time in Tiszalök. This man certainly wasn't stealing wood from the nearby forest. Both he and his wife had jobs and lived in relative comfort. He was just getting into his car around 6 p.m. to go to work when he was shot dead. The police are madly looking for the perpetrator whom they suspect has military training and might be responsible for two earlier assassinations.

The question of military training takes us straight to Bolivia and perhaps reveals something about the Hungarian far right as well. The Hungarian Foreign Ministry's reaction to the Bolivian attack on the Bolivian-Hungarian-Croatian-Irish "terrorists" has been, in my opinion, somewhat hasty. Although the new foreign minister keeps repeating that the Hungarian government considers this case a "consular" matter, the first announcements were tinged with political overtones. That is, the Hungarians don't think that Rózsa-Flores and his co-conspirators were terrorists. Neither do the journalists. The word "terrorists" is always in quotation marks. Here is a good example. The caption reads: "Confiscated weapons from 'terrorists' in Santa Cruz: A show?" In brief, they consider the Bolivian allegations baseless. As far as I can ascertain, Rózsa-Flores might not have wanted to assassinate Evo Morales, but he certainly went to Bolivia to organize an army. Meanwhile MTV aired a video by András Kepes who has a weekly program called "Strange Stories." Eduardo Rózsa-Flores, an old friend of Kepes, approached him to videotape a conversation that Kepes was supposed to keep  secret and release only in the event of Rózsa-Flores's death. The conversation took place on September 8, 2008. Rózsa-Flores told Kepes that he had been approached by people from Bolivia asking him to come and organize an army that was supposed to defend the eastern provinces' autonomy from the central government. Although he emphasized that this army was supposed to act only in self-defense, by the end it was clear that if Santa Cruz's aim of autonomy was in any way threatened, this army was ready to engage in a civil war. Rózsa-Flores and his co-conspirators received money for travel expenses to Brazil where "his friends" waited for him at the airport. They took him by car to the "green zone" and on foot he crossed the border illegally through the jungle. On the other side, friends met him and took him to Santa Cruz. In the video Rózsa-Flores didn't mention anyone else, but he must have recruited men from the Székely Legion made up of Transylvanian Hungarians living in Hungary.

The video offered some interesting tidbits about Rózsa-Flores's life. A few years ago he bought a house in a village somewhere in northern Hungary. On the solid wooden fence one can see MONDJON LE! in large white letters. "Resign!" in English. When Kepes inquired who should resign, he jokingly said: "Everybody should resign!" It is of course obvious whom he had in mind: Ferenc Gyurcsány. After all, Fidesz had demanded the same for years. Gyurcsány's picture was plastered on some kind of damaged military object and the rumor spread that Rózsa-Flores practiced target shooting there. That turned out not to be the case. However, he had a somewhat damaged Stalin bust in his backyard with a whole in its head. Rózsa-Flores said something to Kepes about using the bust as a vessel for "vomiting" after drinking bouts. However, people remember when Rózsa-Flores's room was full of Lenin and Che Guevara pictures and Stalin statues. That time not as a joke. In his yard one can also find Christ on the cross alongside Stalin and Gyurcsány. All sorts of helmets that Rózsa-Flores had collected over the years were placed in a row . He mentioned something about trips to Baghdad, Indonesia, Sudan, and his conversion to Islam. However, his conversion didn't prevent him from serving as an altar boy in the local Catholic church.

It is fascinating how Rózsa-Flores's image has been morphing of late in certain circles. Kepes thinks that he was a unique individual who cannot be labeled simply as a left- or a right-winger. A unique individual who fought for the liberation of people in general. However, the bits and pieces that emerge from his past life show an erratic individual who began his career, most likely under the influence of his father, on the far left. According to an anonymous friend, he even spent some time in the school of the KGB in Moscow. He apparently worked for the Hungarian secret service as an informer. One of his daily reports about a meeting of the democratic opposition in Hungary actually became public. Later he became active in Fidesz. But then he moved farther to the right.

Another admirer of Rózsa-Flores is Ibolya Fekete, the writer and director of the film Chico  (2001) in which Rózsa-Flores more or less plays himself in the Serbian-Croatian war of the early 1990s. The film is going to be shown again because of the great interest. Opinions on the film vary. Some find it a pseudo-documentary, no more than a travelogue through five countries. One can read some viewer comments here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0251636/usercomments

Rózsa-Flores had to be a very persuasive man to convince inexperienced young men to travel to Bolivia to fight for a cause they knew nothing about except what Rózsa-Flores told them. One of these men, originally from Transylvania, is dead. Another was badly beaten. Yesterday I heard that another Hungarian was arrested: Tibor Révész, the founder of the Székely Légió. When I tried to learn something about the Légió I found a website and there an anonymous comment: "Tibor Révész, you're responsible for the death of Árpád Magyarosi." Although the Székely Légió vigorously denied Romanian accusations that it was a paramilitary organization established to fight for the autonomy of those two or three Romanian counties where Hungarians are in the majority, perhaps Romanian intelligence wasn't that far off after all. I hasten to add that the whole thing sounds to me like a childish enterprise without the slightest chance of success.

The Hungarian far-right in Bolivia--Eduardo Rózsa-Flores

It didn't quite work out. The Bolivian police, under not entirely clear circumstances, killed three foreign "terrorists" and arrested two. The group is accused of plotting to assassinate Bolivian president Evo Morales. The Bolivian president is convinced that Washington is behind the assassination attempt, but this is highly unlikely given the cast of characters. Unfortunately, most of the news accounts that I read shed little light on the would-be assassins. What, they asked, was the common bond among the five men (names often misspelled) involved in the plot? Perhaps the Balkan wars where at least two of the five fought on Croatia's side against Serbia. My feeling is that Croatia and the Balkan wars have mighty little to do with this case.

The leader of the group, now dead, was Eduardo Rózsa-Flores. He was born in Bolivia but spent his teens and most of his adult life in Hungary. We can find ample information about him and his family on his blog "Sic Semper Tyrannus" (http://eduardorozsaflores.blogspot.com/), roughly translated as "Death to the Tyrant." His father, György Rózsa, was a painter and university professor who left Hungary in 1948 and married Nelly Flores Arias, a Spanish high school teacher. The couple settled in Bolivia, where Eduardo was born in 1960. In 1973 they moved to Chile, but the family left after Pinochet's military coup. For a couple of years they lived in Sweden as political refugees. In 1975 the Rózsa-Flores family moved to Hungary, where Eduardo attended a Budapest high school. He then spent three years at the country's military academy but left without graduating. Two years later he enrolled at ELTE, the Budapest university, from which he subsequently received an M.A. He was the last KISZ (Communist Youth Organization) secretary of ELTE. He later claimed that the only reason he took the job was to show that he could win the post against the wishes of people like Ferenc Gyurcsány. (I suspect that this is revisionist history.) After university he dabbled in journalism, taking advantage of his fluency in Spanish. For example, he wrote articles for La Vanguardia, a Spanish daily. He also supplied news to the BBC's Spanish language radio. He first reported from Croatia as a journalist but later volunteered to serve in the Croatian army. He fought in the battles of Osijek and Vukovár. The Croats appreciated his services and bestowed citizenship on him. President Franjo Tudjman promoted him to the military rank of major. A year later he became a colonel. He was wounded at least three times in different battles. In 1994 he returned to Hungary and published seven volumes of poetry. I didn't manage to find the seven volumes of poetry, but I did find five other books dealing mostly with the Croatian-Serbian war. During his stay in Croatia his name was associated with shady deals involving weapons and drug sales. According to rumors two journalists, one from Switzerland and another from Great Britain, who were investigating these transactions disappeared into thin air. In 2002 Ibolya Fekete made a documentary of his life, "Chico," that won first place in the documentary category at the Thirty-third Hungarian Film Festival. Next Tuesday MTV will air another documentary that is apparently the last testament of Rózsa-Flores. It was made in September before he embarked on his journey to Bolivia. One has to wonder how truthful these recollections are. Here, by the way, is a recent picture of Rózsa-Flores.

In 2003 he converted to Islam and called himself the spokesman for the Independent Iraqi Government, but that flirtation was short-lived and soon enough he showed up in Hungarian far-right circles. Yesterday the Jobbik website mourned his loss. "With deep sorrow we report that our friend and fellow editor, Eduardo Rózsa-Flores, passed away. He died for his country."

And this leads us to two other alleged co-conspirators. One is Árpád Magyarosi who is among the dead and the other is Előd Tóásó who is in Bolivian custody. Both are Transylvanian Hungarians who most likely knew each other for a long time because both attended high school in Sovata (Szováta) in Romania. After finishing high school both moved to Hungary. Magyarosi sounds like a real loser: he kept changing high schools and tried several colleges as well. He had musical ambitions with only scant talent. He organized several rock groups that all failed. And as we can see from this photo, Magyarosi's interests weren't confined to music. The other Transylvanian, Előd Tóásó, was another drifter who never managed to finish any of the colleges he attended. He too was interested in the military and attended the Miklós Zrínyi Military Academy for a while. He speaks Romanian, English, and Spanish in addition to Hungarian. Both men joined a group, founded in 2002, that purported to promote rock climbing, the Székely Légió (Legion Siculus).  In 2006 the group became front page news in Hungarian papers because Ziua, a Bucharest daily, claimed that the Legion was a paramilitary organization planning attacks on Romania in order to establish an autonomous Hungarian (Szekler) area in the middle of Transylvania. The Romanian paper claimed that there were thousands enrolled in the Legion. The leaders of the Legion protested: it is an innocent organization that gives advice to young men and women interested in rock climbing. However, the Legion's internet website talked about survivor trips where the members carried heavy backpacks (20 kg) in addition to "weapons." They were schooled in marksmanship and the ability to detect mines. These don't sound like innocent rock climbing activities.

The third man who died in the raid is an Irishman called Michael Martin Dwyer who was apparently obsessed by weapons and who is described as a "soldier of fortune," a man obsessed with guns and assassins. According to accounts, he served as a mercenary in the Balkan wars. Rózsa-Flores who is described as the head of the group, might have met Dwyer in Croatia. I found this picture of Dwyer on the internet. As you can see, he is obsessed all right.

And now comes the real bombshell. There is a periodical called Kapu (Gate) http://members.chello.hu/kapu/ The last issue can be downloaded in pdf form. Real right-wing stuff. Rózsa-Flores was an important contributor and a good friend of the editor-in-chief, Zoltán Brády. Brády, after hearing of his friend's death, told MTI (Magyar Távirati Iroda) that it was Rózsa-Flores and he who were responsible for leaking Ferenc Gyurcsány's infamous speech at Balatonőszöd! He didn't reveal from whom they received the transcript or to whom they passed it on. Maybe yes, maybe no. In any case it is intriguing.

Meanwhile Rózsa-Flores, Árpád Magyarosi, and Michael Martin Dwyer are dead. These guys all seemed to be well versed in guerilla warfare. The Hungarian crew, at least, was also involved in far-right activities. Why they went to Bolivia I don't know, but perhaps it's a good thing they went there. The plot was foiled. Can you imagine if they decided to kill, for example, the Hungarian prime minister or the president? I think they would have been capable of it. The Hungarian far right is convinced that there is a communist dictatorship in Hungary and, after all, "sic semper tyrannis."