A leader of Hungary's 1956 revolution dies

2009-07-04 23:56:01 -

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) - 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 defense 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 Saturday morning in Budapest.
Kiraly served in the Hungarian army during World War II 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.
Kiraly's task was to organize the police, army and individual groups of insurgents into a cohesive body meant to help Prime Minister Imre Nagy's newly minted multiparty government stabilize the country.
When Soviet troops and tanks crushed the revolution, Kiraly fled to Austria and later to the United States, where he taught military history at Brooklyn College of City University of New York.