Bela Biszku, a senior hardline figure in Hungary's former communist regime during and after the doomed 1956 uprising against Soviet rule, has died aged 94, local media reported Friday.
Biszku was sentenced to five years and six months in jail in May 2014 for being "actively involved" in ordering security forces to open fire on crowds in two incidents in 1956 in which some 50 people died.
But in December, with the infirm Biszku under house arrest, the jail term was suspended and reduced, although he was still convicted of war crimes, denial of communist crimes and misuse of ammunition.
He died in hospital on Thursday, Hungarian media reported.
More than 2,000 civilians were killed in total during the 1956 uprising, which was crushed after Soviet tanks rolled into the country. Some 300 were executed, more than 20,000 were jailed and 200,000 fled the country.
Biszku, who later became interior minister, was the first of the 1956 leaders to be investigated over the violence.
Communism ended in Hungary in 1990, with the country going on to join the European Union in 2004.
In 2011, the conservative government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban modified a law to enable people suspected of war crimes during the uprising to be tried.
