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Budapest (AFP) – Hungary has declared British far-right figure Nick Griffin a “persona non grata” and barred him from the country, the interior ministry said Friday.
The announcement came two days after Budapest expelled James Dowson, another prominent British far-right activist with links to Griffin.
The decision to bar the 58-year-old Griffin, former leader of the British National Party (BNP), was taken on the advice of Hungary’s counter-terror police unit TEK, the ministry said in a statement sent to AFP.
“The British national John Nicholas Griffin is a persona non grata in Hungary who has been… issued with entry and residency bans,” it said.
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Earlier this year Griffin, who headed the BNP from 1999 to 2014, said he planned to move to Hungary as a “refugee” from western Europe, praising the hardline policies of populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban against asylum-seekers.
Griffin made the comments during a Budapest visit for a “Stop Operation Soros!” conference, aimed at halting the pro-refugee activities of Hungarian-born US financier George Soros’s Open Society Foundation.
Former BNP member Dowson had been operating a branch of the anti-immigration group Knights Templar International in the Hungarian capital since 2015.
The 52-year-old was expelled because authorities considered him a “national security threat”, according to security sources cited in the Hungarian weekly newspaper Magyar Narancs.
He also set up a news agency in Budapest that he said aimed to help Donald Trump win the US election last year.
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