The harsh conditions of an Italian detained in Hungary threaten to cause friction between the Government of the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and that of her Hungarian counterpart, the ultranationalist Viktor Orbán, who have always demonstrated a special ideological harmony. Pressured by public opinion, Meloni had no choice but to pick up the phone last night and call Orbán to draw his attention to the situation of Ilaria Salis, a Milanese anti-fascist militant in preventive detention for almost a year in a maximum security prison in Budapest accused of attacking neo-Nazis.
This Monday the first hearing of the process was held against Salis, 39, who had already reported that she was imprisoned in an “inhumane” situation. She was taken to the courtroom tied hand and foot, while a Hungarian police officer led her with a chain. The images, reproduced by the Italian media, have generated enormous indignation in Italy and yesterday the Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajani, summoned the Hungarian ambassador to protest the treatment.
“We want to know why the basic rules regarding the treatment of detainees are not respected. “This time it seems to me that it has gone too far,” Tajani lamented in statements to the public broadcaster RAI. “We have already spoken about this with the Hungarian Government, I have also delivered a document to the Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs asking him to monitor compliance with the rules, we follow the matter day by day,” he remarked.
The matter is not easy to face for Meloni given his political closeness to Orbán, at a complicated time when Budapest is in the European spotlight for its veto of the reform of the community budget. The call came only after an unfortunate comment from the Minister of Agriculture, Francesco Lollobrigida – brother-in-law of the premier – in which he claimed not to be able to comment on the images because he “had not seen them.” In the telephone exchange Meloni tried to balance asking for more humane treatment for Salis while also showing his respect for the sovereignty of Hungarian judges.
The Hungarian Prosecutor’s Office is asking for 11 years in prison for Salis, a teacher originally from Monza, a city on the Milanese outskirts. She is accused of having attacked some neo-Nazi militants between February 9 and 12, 2023, a few days in which thousands of people from all over Europe went to Hungary to commemorate, with demonstrations and events, a Nazi battalion that in 1945 tried to prevent the siege of Budapest by the Red Army.
According to Hungarian investigators, the Italian is the main defendant as part of a far-left organization that planned the attacks. She is charged with “having participated in several assaults causing aggravated bodily injury,” and the maximum penalty for these crimes is 24 years in prison. Two other German anti-fascists, a man and a woman, are also accused. She has pleaded not guilty, but the judge confirmed the preventive detention and postponed the process to the next hearing, on May 24. Instead, the German man pleaded guilty and has been sentenced to three years in prison.
The woman’s lawyer, Mauro Straini, regretted that during the hearing the cuffs were removed from her feet, but not those from her hands, and she remained in those conditions, tied by an agent, for three and a half hours. The Italian opposition has strongly criticized this situation, and they have also reproached Meloni for not having intervened. “We are not interested in the fact that Orbán is a dear friend. Friends and political allies come after the Italians, their rights and their dignity. It is time to put an end to this shame,” attacked the leader of the 5 Star Movement, Giuseppe Conte. “It is not understood why the Government does not activate with all its forces to ensure respect for the fundamental rights and dignity of an Italian citizen,” criticized the general secretary of the Democratic Party, Elly Schlein.
The Italian diplomatic machinery is working so that Salis can comply with the precautionary measures under house arrest, and then try to take her to Italy to serve her sentence if she is found guilty. Everything comes after Salis’ father, Roberto Salis, has carried out a campaign for months to denounce the conditions in which his daughter was, “treated like an animal”, in a cell with rats and bedbugs that were causing her a allergic reaction. During the first week, according to the defendant, she did not have access to toilet paper, soap or feminine hygiene products. They have also reported that during the first six months she was prevented from contacting her family, that since September she has only been able to see her twice, and that on many occasions she was not given dinner. The Council of Europe has expressed its concern that Hungarian prisons are among the most overcrowded on the European continent.
