Hungarian police said on Jan 24 they had detained three people after raids against a group they said was preparing “to take control” of the country and form a “Scythian Hungary”.
Scythians were nomads who lived between the ninth and second century BC, and a fringe of the Hungarian far-right scene claims to be of Scythian ethnicity.
About 150 officers carried out raids at 10 locations in Budapest and elsewhere in central Hungary, said the National Bureau of Investigation (NNI), which handles serious crime.
They questioned seven men and a woman, detaining three of the men aged between 53 and 88, the statement added.
“The eight suspects were preparing to take control of the country, and also threatened to disarm Hungarian police and soldiers if they resisted,” said the NNI statement.
A video was posted on a video-sharing social media site in November 2023, in which group members “declared the formation of Scythian Hungary”, the NNI said.
Police also seized weapons including firearms and machine guns during the raids, the statement added.
It added the group had planned to arrest former and current members of the government.
During the 2022 census, some 2,400 people of Hungary’s 9.7 million said they spoke Scythian.
In 2023, Alfred Pocs, a doctor known for denying the danger of Covid-19 infections, submitted an initiative to have Scythians officially recognised as one of the national minorities of Hungary.
But parliament in December overwhelmingly voted against the proposal after the Hungarian Academy of Sciences stated that there were “neither physical nor legal conditions” for the recognition of Scythians as a living minority.
