There is no information that would relate to specific acts of terrorism planned to be carried out in Hungary, the Chief Security Advisor to the Prime Minister said on the Tuesday morning programme of the public service television news channel M1.

György Bakondi was interviewed in the context of the incident in which a lorry drove into the crowd at one of the most famous Christmas markets in the Western part of Berlin on Monday evening. Twelve people died, 49 were injured, several of them seriously.

The Chief Advisor said: notwithstanding the fact that there is no information on any specific act of terrorism planned to be carried out in Hungary, the Hungarian authorities, the law enforcement agencies and the secret services are making every effort to obtain as much controlled information as possible, and “should something be in the making, to prevent it and to guarantee the Hungarian people’s safety and peaceful Christmas”.

He remarked with respect to the Berlin incident: while the different secret services had information relating to acts of terrorism in the preparatory phase, “the intelligence gathered remained at the level of a general threat”, meaning that it contained relatively little specific information that would have enabled the authorities to implement concrete measures.

At the same time, Mr Bakondi reiterated that the authorities managed to detain minors in Belgium in recent weeks who intended to carry out bomb attacks, but in Germany, too, several attempts have been successfully foiled.

(Cabinet Office of the Prime Minister/MTI)