TV Camerawoman Handed 3 Year Probation For Tripping Refugees Fleeing Hungary
A Hungarian camerawoman who was filmed kicking refugees in 2015 was handed 3 years probation for disorderly conduct by prosecutors on Thursday.
The camerawoman, 40-year-old Petra Laszlo, caused international outrage after she was filmed kicking and tripping refugees, including young children, near the Hungary-Siberia border in September 2015. In a court ruling last year, she was charged with "breach of peace".
Judge Illes Nanasi on Thursday found her actions to have breached public peace by triggering "indignation and outrage" and he handed her a 3 year probation -- a conviction which will be dropped by if she does not re-offend during that period.
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Petra Laszlo, who was fired from her job at the Hungarian TV station N1TV after the video surfaced, did not appear at the court in Szeged, southern Hungary, in person as she had received multiple death threats, her attorney told the Associated Press.
Speaking to the court via video link, a tearful Laszlo claimed self-defense as the reason behind her actions. "It was all over within two seconds," she said, adding she was acting out of panic and felt under attack. "Everybody was shouting, it was very frightening."
After carefully reviewing the footage -- in which Laszlo can be seen kicking two people, including a young girl, and then later tripping a 52-year-old man carrying a child -- the judge dismissed her self-defense claim stating that her behavior "ran counter to societal norms," reports Aljazeera.
Laszlo had apologized for her actions days after the incident took place. She stated that she had panicked and wanted only to protect herself when the asylum seekers broke through the police cordon in a field and ran towards the gathered journalists.
"I pushed him [the man with a child] only because I was afraid. I did not see that there was a child. I'm sorry that it turned out this way," Laszlo told a Russian paper during an interview in October 2015. "I can definitely say that my life is ruined. It's unlikely that I will be able to find a job and do what I like the most."
Laszlo, an unemployed mother of small children, said that her life has changed for the worse since the incident and that she has been branded as the "heartless, racist, children-kicking camerawoman."
