Trial begins of Italian citizen, now running for the European Parliament, accused of attacking neo-Nazis in Hungary
In Hungary the closely-watched trial has begun of an Italian teacher who, according to her indictment, is an extreme left-winger who perpetrated an attack on a radical right-winger in February of last year. Ilaria Salis (39) has been in custody in Hungary for more than a year.
The case sparked general outrage in Italy when Salis was brought to her arraignment with a chain around her waist and with both handcuffs and leg irons, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports. The wire service report also reminds readers of the diplomatic tensions between Budapest and Rome caused by the case.
On the eve of the trial, Salis was released from custody and is currently under house arrest in Budapest. Before leaving the courtroom, she smiled as she showed Italian journalists present the electronic ankle bracelet she has to wear.
The Ambassador of Italy, Manuel Jacoangeli, was also present for the start of the trial. The alleged victim of the attack and two witnesses testified without being able to positively identify any perpetrators, because those who committed the attack wore hoods at the time.
The next hearing is set for the start of September. AFP reports that the verdict would then take several months to be decided.
The teacher, who is from Monza, near Milan, spent a month in custody under high surveillance. The Hungarian prosecutor has accused her of making “attempts on human lives… within the framework of a criminal organization”.
The prosecutor seeks 11 years in prison for the accused, with the loud support of the Government, which claims to want to “protect Hungarians from ultra-left violence” from abroad. Photos of the activist in chains sparked strong outrage in her home country across party lines.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who leads a far-right party herself, has spoken by telephone with her ally and counterpart Viktor Orbán and the Hungarian Ambassador to Rome, seeking an explanation for their treatment of Salis, which Italy said it considers “inappropriate”. Because of her fresh notoriety, the Alliance of the Left and the Greens (AVS), a small party in Italy, has selected Salis as the top candidate on their list for the elections to the European Parliament to be held on 9 June.
Should Salis be elected, she would then be given immunity as a parliamentarian, which would bring her prosecution to an end. “What we are seeing here is absolutely scandalous. This person has perpetrated a brutal crime, but the European far left is defending her and even endeavoring to turn her into a parliamentarian,” Gergely Gulyás, head of the Office of the Prime Minister of Hungary, declared recently.
Amnesty International, a human rights organization, condemned the “humiliating conditions” of Salis’s imprisonment before she was released to house arrest after paying bail in the amount of 16 million forints [EUR 41,000]. “They denied her access to a shower for more than a month,” Roberto Salis, the father of the accused, told the press, objecting to the fact that “in Hungary they consider neo-Nazis to be patriots and antifascists to be enemies of the state.”
The AFP reports that the Council of Europe has criticized Hungarian prisons for their overcrowding. According to Eurostat, the EU’s bureau of statistics, the Central European country has the highest number of prisoners per capita in the entire EU.
The defense is also complaining about the slowness of the proceeding in the Salis case: Translation of all the investigation documents into Italian will not be completed until November. The defendant has denied any guilt in the case and has said that she considers herself a political prisoner.
