The 81-year-old man, who is a Holocaust-denier, had applied to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for political asylum on May 12.

Mahler should have begun a prison sentence in April in Germany, where holocaust-denial is a crime. He was serving a ten-year sentence for disseminating anti-Semitic propaganda. Due to his poor state of health he was set free on bail, but late last year a court ordered him to serve his remaining sentence.

Government spokesman Zoltán Kovács announced that the report from the Munich prosecution that served as a basis for the Spiegel article may not be authentic as to the best of his knowledge at noon on Monday the man had not been arrested.

”According to our information Mahler is in custody in Hungary,” Ken Heidenreich, spokesman for the Munich prosecution general told the periodical.

The one-time founder of a far-left militant group Red Army Faction who later promoted an extreme-right-wing agenda and helped a terrorist escape from prison was caught in Sopron early Monday afternoon.

Source: Hungary Around the Clock

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MTI photo: Koszticsák Szilárd