Anti-Soviet revolution leader dies

Budapest: Bela Kiraly, one of the military leaders of Hungary's short-lived anti-Soviet revolution in 1956, has died, the government said. He was 97.

A brief defence ministry statement provided no other details, including the cause of death or where and when it occurred.

However, the daily newspaper Magyar Nemzet reported that Kiraly died on Saturday morning in Budapest.

Kiraly served in the Hungarian army during the Second World War and later led its military academy.

In 1952, he was sentenced to death on trumped-up conspiracy charges by Hungary's Stalinist regime, but the sentence was later commuted to life in prison.

The October 1956 revolution, aimed at overthrowing the communist regime, lasted less than two weeks before it was crushed. Kiraly had been freed from prison just weeks before the revolution and during it he was named as Budapest's military commander and head of the National Guard.

After the revolution, Kiraly continued to advocate for the revolution's cause and testified at the United Nations about the 1956 events and Soviet brutality.

Kiraly settled down in the United States, becoming a citizen in 1965. He earned a PhD in history at Columbia University and taught military history at Brooklyn College of City University of New York.