Japanese diplomats and Hungarian police have come under fire for their handling of a high-profile case involving an alleged murder of a Japanese woman in Budapest by her Irish husband.
Advertisement
On Tuesday, the Hungarian police issued an apology after an internal investigation revealed that their response to the woman’s requests for help and protection from her abusive husband dating back to 2022 was inadequate.
Kristof Gal, police spokesman in Budapest, apologised and confirmed that five officers had been disciplined for failing to respond to the woman’s complaints about domestic abuse, the Hungarian Conservative magazine reported.
The 43-year-old woman, identified in Hungarian media only by her first name of Megumi, was found dead in a burned-out flat in Budapest on January 29. Initially, police concluded that the fire was accidental, caused by a cigarette igniting her bed.
It was only after an autopsy revealed signs of domestic abuse and her friends noted that Megumi did not smoke did investigators start to scrutinise her former husband, who had reported the fire.
The man, who was not named, had visited the flat earlier that day to pick up the couple’s two children, a son aged 10 and a seven-year-old daughter. Although he claimed to police that he had not returned to the address, security cameras caught him outside the flat disguised with a balaclava.