Budapest - A local leader of the controversial Hungarian Guard, a uniformed extreme nationalist organisation, was severely beaten on Monday during a dawn break-in at his home in a small town just outside Budapest, the national press reported on Tuesday.

The radical right-wing politician, Attila Szabo, was rushed to hospital where he underwent surgery for serious head wounds, according to reports in mainstream right-wing newspapers.

Szabo is the leader of his town's branch of the nationalist Jobbik Movement for a Better Hungary, which hopes to get a member into the European Parliament in the elections next year.

He was also one of the 56 founding members of Hungarian Guard, a controversial uniformed offshoot of the Jobbik movement that has become a familiar sight at anti-government and right-wing demonstrations in Hungary since August 2007.

The leaders of the Hungarian Guard were in court on Monday and Tuesday for the latest hearing in a case brought by the public prosecutor that has dragged on since March. The organisation denies charges of deliberately intimidating Roma communities with its marches against what it calls "gypsy crime."

The group claims it aims only to safeguard Hungarian culture and values, but opponents insist that its black-and-white uniform is reminiscent of that of the Second World War Hungarian fascist party.

A police spokesman, Monika Benyi, said that one of Szabo's assailants had already been arrested and had a long criminal record. The break in and beating was being treated as a routine robbery case, and there was no reason at present to believe the attack was politically motivated, Benyi added.

Hungary's two leading right-wing daily newspapers thought otherwise, however. One of them, Magyar Hirlap, quoted Szabo's wife as saying that four Roma attackers had shouted "be a Hungarian patriot now, you scum!" as they beat her husband with whips and metal tools.

In a separate, unrelated incident, a 19-year-old Roma man was severely wounded by gunfire on Monday evening as he was chopping firewood outside his home in a village in eastern Hungary. Police are investigating the case.

There has been a spate of attacks against the Roma involving guns and petrol bombs in Hungary in recent months. In November a couple were killed when a grenade was thrown through the window of their home in southern Hungary. (dpa)