Trial of Budapest student who planned mass killing begins

The trial of a Budapest law student who confessed to planning to execute 22 people started in Budapest's Metropolitan Court on Tuesday.

Influenced by mass killings in Finnish, German and US school massacres, the 22 year-old man, identified only as Abel S, planned in 2008 to shoot exactly 22 people because of "the 22 bad years" he had lived through, then commit suicide. He joined a sports club to regularly practice shooting. He acquired a 9-millimetre Parabellum-type gun to carry out the mass killing in a Budapest shopping mall or at his own university campus.

Police arrested the man on a street in Budapest in February 2010 after receiving information about his plans from fellow students.

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