Policy and Methods
While the security apparatus were operating, they supported the Hungarian Working People's Party (MDP) directly, with little reference made to Government norms. This support was primarily through the secret gathering of intelligence, primarily through a vast network of informants, like the system used by the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) in the German Democratic Republic.
The investigation network was supplemented with a mechanism of secret arrests, followed by extensive periods of torture (lasting between 3 and 18 months). When the apparatus had extracted confessions of varying quality from a prisoner, the State's system of public procurators and courts would be called in, in order to make a ruling on the sentence. This was the norm of operation for the ÁVH, and was only diverged from in matters of utmost state security; for example, the illegal arrest and indefinite solitary detention of the Communist Party of Great Britain operative Edith Bone. Despite the forced nature of confessions, retractions at trial were not considered a danger to the process, due to the obvious threat of continued torture during a recess of the trial.
Read more about this topic: State Protection Authority
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