“My daughter he has to stay inside 23 hours a day and he only has an hour of air. It is a harsh prison that is worse than 41 bis.” Words of Roberto Salis, Ilaria’s fathera teacher who is in prison in Hungary and for 7 months was unable to communicate even with his family.
«The judge had established – Salis reveals at the Book Fair – that he could not verify that my wife and I were respectable people. I asked the Embassy to vouch for us but we were not able to open this channel before last September 7th.” Now Ilaria Salis has been in prison for 14 months and the prospects, in addition to the hearings in which she is admitted to the courtroom in chains, are not very rosy.
“We have to get her out, she can’t take it anymore”
«My daughter can’t take it anymore – says her father – she’s been there for fifteen months, lives in a complicated situation. We have to get her out. It is tougher than Italy’s 41 bis. The diet is also complicated. We managed to get her a hairdryer after fourteen months. For seven months we were denied contact, now I can only talk to her 70 minutes a week, two hours of Skype a month. She calls me,” she added. “Luckily it’s a rock, I’m holding on.”
The candidacy
The activist was a candidate in the European elections with the Green Left Alliance, if elected she could obtain immunity and be released from prison. «The next hearing is May 24 – says Roberto Salis – then the court will go on holiday and we will talk about it again in September. The situation is Kafkaesque, because the documents must be translated into the language of the accused, so that he can understand what he is accused of, but we were told that they will be available in November. In the context of the inconsistencies of the European Union, if Ilaria were a Hungarian citizen she would have immunity since May 1st, however, she is Italian and remains in prison, it’s a case of racism».
Tough prison
The issue concerns above all the conditions under which Ilaria Salis she is held in a harsh prison without having yet undergone a fair trial. «I’m sending a message: we need to free Ilaria – he says Roberto Salis – because it is not possible for him to suffer harassment in a country that declares itself an illiberal democracy. Ilaria can read two books a month, which are checked.” Hence the idea of the parliamentarian Marco Grimaldi: «We launch an appeal to the publishers of the Salon – he says – send books to prisons, even the Hungarian ones, let’s see if they subject them to an embargo like weapons».
