Naked MEP leaps from window after ‘all-male orgy’ bust
Hungarian politician Jozsef Szajer admits attending ‘private party’ broken up by Belgian police for Covid curfew violations
A leading member of Hungary’s ruling right-wing Fidesz party has resigned as an MEP after being busted in a police raid on what he has described as a “private party” in Brussels - along with 24 naked men.
Jozsef Szajer has provided no other details about the get-together, which has been called a “house party violating lockdown rules” by the BBC, a “sex party” by The Guardian, and an “all-male orgy in the heart of the city’s gay-bar district” by The New York Times.
Szajer - whose party has enacted repressive anti-gay legislation under the leadership of Viktor Orban - is said to have jumped from a window and shinned down a drainpipe after police arrived to investigate an alleged breach of Belgium’s Covid-19 curfew. The cops reportedly found “25 naked men, including an MEP and a number of diplomats”, says Politico London Playbook’s Alex Wickham.
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Prosecutors “said in a statement that a passer-by saw a man ‘fleeing along the gutter’ with bloody hands” as the raid unfolded on Friday night, The Times reports. After being apprehended, “narcotics were found in his backpack”, the statement continued, but the man was “unable to produce any identity documents”.
According to the prosecutor, police subsequently escorted the man “to his place of residence, where he identified himself as S J (1961) by means of a diplomatic passport”.
Szajer, whose wife is a justice on Hungary’s Constitutional Court, has denied using drugs, saying: “Police said an ecstasy pill was found. It’s not mine, I don’t know who placed it and how.”
Despite his denials, his resignation will be “a serious blow for Fidesz, which has governed Hungary for the past decade”, says the BBC. The party “has cast itself increasingly as a defender of conservative Christian values and has used anti-gay rhetoric at home in Hungary”, adds The New York Times.
Szajer’s contrition appears limited, however. “I am sorry that I have broken the rules of gatherings,” he said yesterday. “This was irresponsible on my part, and I will take the sanctions that come with it.”
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Holden Frith is The Week’s digital director. He also makes regular appearances on “The Week Unwrapped”, speaking about subjects as diverse as vaccine development and bionic bomb-sniffing locusts. He joined The Week in 2013, spending five years editing the magazine’s website. Before that, he was deputy digital editor at The Sunday Times. He has also been TheTimes.co.uk’s technology editor and the launch editor of Wired magazine’s UK website. Holden has worked in journalism for nearly two decades, having started his professional career while completing an English literature degree at Cambridge University. He followed that with a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in Chicago. A keen photographer, he also writes travel features whenever he gets the chance.
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