The placid relations between the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and the Hungarian counterpart, the ultranationalist Viktor Orbán, are well known. Both enjoy ideological harmony and, in fact, Meloni’s role was decisive in the last European Council to unblock the Hungarian veto and unlock the 50,000 million in European aid to Ukraine. But the harsh conditions to which an Italian detained in Hungary is subjected threaten to cause a rift between the two presidents. The issue crept into Thursday’s summit in Brussels, where the leader of Brothers of Italy, after enormous media pressure in her country, took the opportunity to draw attention to the situation of Ilaria Salis, a Milanese anti-fascist militant in pre-trial detention for almost a year in a maximum security prison in Budapest accused of assaulting neo-Nazis.
“I have spoken to the Hungarian Prime Minister as I would speak about any Italian prisoner to ensure that our compatriots are treated with dignity, with respect, a fair process and also fast, because I was impressed to know that the next hearing will be in May”, he assured from the community capital.
On Monday, the first hearing of the process was held against Salis, 39 years old, who had already denounced that she was imprisoned in an “inhumane” manner. She was brought into the courtroom with her hands and feet tied while a Hungarian police officer led her in a chain. The images, reproduced by the Italian media, have generated enormous indignation in Italy and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani, summoned the Hungarian ambassador to protest the treatment. “We want to know why the basic rules on the treatment of detainees are not respected. This time it seems to me that it has gone too far”, lamented Tajani to the public channel RAI.
The question is not easy to face for Meloni given the political proximity to Orbán. He has to strike a balance between defending an Italian citizen and not offending the Hungarian hawk by questioning the sovereignty of the judicial system. Italian diplomacy is pressing for the detainee to be transferred to her country, an issue that “will be known as the process progresses”, according to the representative, despite the fact that she pointed out that “in Hungary there is judicial autonomy and the Government does not enter into the process”.
The Hungarian Prosecutor’s Office is asking for 11 years in prison for Salis, a teacher originally from Monza, on the outskirts of Milan. They accuse him of having attacked some neo-Nazi militants between February 9 and 12, 2023, days when thousands of people from all over Europe went to Hungary to commemorate a Nazi battalion that in 1945 tried to prevent the siege of Budapest by the Red Army .
According to Hungarian investigators, she is the main accused as part of an extreme left-wing organization that would have planned the attacks. She is charged with “participating in several assaults and causing aggravated bodily injury”, and the maximum penalty for these crimes is 24 years in prison. They also accuse two more German anti-fascists, a man and a woman. She has declared herself innocent, but the judge confirmed the pre-trial detention and postponed the process until the next hearing, on May 24. Instead, the German man pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison.
The woman’s lawyer, Mauro Straini, regretted that during the hearing the handcuffs were removed from her feet, but not from her hands, and she remained in these conditions, tied by an officer, for three and a half hours . It all comes after Salis’ father, Roberto Salis, has waged a months-long campaign to denounce the conditions his daughter was in. According to a letter she sent herself from prison, she was “treated like an animal”, in a cell with rats and bedbugs that caused an allergic reaction. During the first week, according to the accused, she did not have access to toilet paper, soap or feminine hygiene products. They have also reported that during the first six months he was prevented from contacting his family, that since September he has only been able to see him twice, and that many times he was not given dinner. The Council of Europe has expressed concern over the fact that Hungarian prisons are among the most overcrowded on the continent.
The issue has become a matter of political debate in the country after the leaders of the opposition, Elly Schlein (Democratic Party) and Giuseppe Conte (Moviment 5 Estrelles) called on Meloni not to do more for Salis. In addition, the deputy prime minister and leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, who is competing for the far-right vote with Meloni, has entered into a direct controversy with the father of the arrested woman, who has announced a lawsuit against him for defaming his daughter For days the league player has been asking for her to be judged in Budapest, says she should not be a teacher and recalls her involvement in an assault on a booth of her party in Monza in 2017 by members of a social center, facts for which Salis she was already acquitted.
