(Budapest) The head of Budapest’s Municipal Criminal Court has struck out a section of a ruling by one of his judges that implied pelting marchers with eggs in a gay pride parade was protected free speech.

Last week a judge made the remark in a ruling in a case involving more than a dozen people arrested during a disturbance by ultra-nationalists during Budapest’s pride march.

Charges against all but four of the protestors who refused to obey a police order to disperse were dismissed. In the ruling the judge noted that throwing eggs did not result in any injury.

Tuesday the head judge in the criminal division said that the constitution does not protect people from attacking others. Judge Istvan Konya also told the media that 16 criminal cases against the rightwing protestors is continuing.

Konya’s action followed outrage from gay groups to Hungarian politicians.

Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany said that the constitution guarantees the right for peaceful assembly and that those guarantees may have to be strengthened to prevent futures violent attacks against gay people.

Gyurcsany made the remarks following a meeting with President Laszlo Solyom, Parliament Speaker Katalin Szili, Constitutional Court Chair Peter Paczolay and acting Supreme Court chief Bertalan Kaposvari.

Gyurcsany said it was every citizen’s basic right to freely choose and experience his or her ethnic, religious, cultural and sexual identity and he was critical of the protests that marked the pride parade.

“If the purpose is violence and restricting other people’s freedoms … then assembly is not a basic right,” he said.

Dozens of protesters from a right wing Hungarian nationalist group clashed with marchers and police on July 5.

Marchers were pelted with eggs, bottles and rocks and set fire to a police van.

Police used water cannon and tear gas to disperse the protesters at several points along a boulevard in downtown Budapest.

Police initially refused to grant gay pride organizers a parade permit.

Chief Gabor Toth said the parade would obstruct major traffic routes in the center of the Hungarian capital. Toth reversed his position following pressure from LGBT groups both inside Hungary and across Europe.

But at the same time he gave permission for a far right group permission to stage a counter protest.

The group, Rendszervalto, posted on its Web site an appeal for “Hungarian patriots” to go to the counter march.

“We will not tolerate foreign perverts of whatever color forcing their alien and sick world onto Hungary,” the posting said. It called for “healthy and morally acceptable people” to show that Hungary ’s future can only be secured by “productive pair relationships, reproducing and well-functioning families”.

In the days leading up to the parade two gay businesses in the city were firebombed.

Last year the participants of Budapest Pride March also experienced attacks by right wing extremists.