On the website police.hu, the Communication Department of the National Police Headquarters has announced that, at the Police Administration Centre on Monday, Chief Commissioner of Police Károly Papp presented recognition awards for outstanding work to 134 people who participated in capturing the person suspected of detonating a bomb on Teréz Boulevard, Budapest.

It was reported that the suspected perpetrator was captured through the coordinated activity of almost a thousand police officers.

Residual materials and evidence gathered in the investigation have been examined in a variety of ways in specialist fields including criminal psychology, bomb disposal, and chemical, weapons, photographic and video analysis.

A total of 1,044 reports from the public were examined, 1,313 video recordings were taken into possession and 217 witnesses were questioned before the suspect was detained on 19 October.

The announcement states that Chief Commissioner Papp praised and presented awards to 116 police officers from the National Police Investigation Bureau, Budapest Police Headquarters and Pest County Police Headquarters, as well as 18 colleagues from cooperating bodies.

In the Ministry of Interior on Monday, Prosecutor General Péter Polt also presented awards to 48 prosecutors, police officers and other members of the services, for playing important roles in capturing the suspected bomber.

On the night of 24 September there was a bomb explosion outside the ground floor of commercial premises on Teréz Boulevard in Budapest’s District VI. Two police officers were injured, one of them critically.

On 20 October Imre Keresztes, Chief of the Central Prosecutorial Investigation Office, announced that a man was being held in connection with the crime. The court has placed the suspected perpetrator in pre-trial detention, which on 21 November was extended until 21 February 2017.

(MTI)