WORLD : Imre Nagy Executed Illegally After Show Trial, Hungary Regime Says

BUDAPEST, Hungary — The ruling Communist Party declared today that Imre Nagy, hanged for treason for his role as premier during the 1956 Hungarian uprising, was executed illegally after a show trial.

The statement by spokesman Laszlo Major after a session of the party’s 118-member Central Committee overturns more than three decades of official party dogma.

“It can already be determined that it was a fabricated political trial,” Major told a news conference. “Imre Nagy’s execution was certainly judicially illegal.”

Nagy was exhumed from an unmarked grave on March 29 for reburial with four associates on June 16, the 31st anniversary of his execution. The funeral is expected to draw vast crowds from home and abroad.

Nagy, who attempted to withdraw Hungary from the Warsaw Pact during the uprising, had been condemned by the party for more than three decades as a “counter-revolutionary” and a traitor.

But since Janos Kadar was ousted as leader a year ago, the party has begun to reassess the 1956 uprising, which was crushed by a Soviet-led invasion.