FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
BUDAPEST – After a year, three months and ten days in prison, Ilaria Salis she left Gyorskocsi utca prison on Thursday in Budapest and was transferred to the House arrest in the apartment in the Hungarian capital already identified and prepared to welcome her. There the was applied to her electronic braceletas ordered by the court of appeal which last week modified the precautionary measure.
«We finally have the chance to hug Ilaria again, let’s hope this is it a temporary stop before finally seeing it in Italy» comments Roberto Salis, the father of the Monza activist.
The situation was resolved after yesterday the Hungarian lawyers of the Italian activist detained since February 2023 on charges of criminal association and attack on two neo-Nazi militantsthey received from Italy the transfer of 16 million forints (equivalent to approximately 40,000 euros) and immediately transferred it to the current account of the local judicial administration. An accreditation that made the judges’ provision become operational.
In the accommodation in Budapest where Ilaria Salis has just started serving house arrest, the activist’s father, Roberto, has already arranged the conditions to allow his daughter to participate, as best she can, in the two weeks of election campaign who are missing from the vote for the European Parliament, a race in which the anti-fascist activist is participating as a candidate on the Green-Left Alliance lists.
«In the last fifteen months he was only able to find out through Hungarian TV news that she has just begun to understand and the little information that we could convey to her in direct and remote conversations – explains Roberto Salis – while now he will be able to do it through Italian channels which he can follow from home.”
But beyond that, with the assignment to house arrest, the prisoner-accused-candidate she will no longer be forced to appear in court, during the trial, in shackles and chains as has happened up to now. Already tomorrow, the day set for the new hearing before the Budapest court in the trial against Salis and another German co-defendant (who is in Germany, subjected to a milder surveillance measure), will be able to appear without a leash, nor surrounded by agents in riot gear. And perhaps this is one of the reasons that convinced the Hungarian magistrates to grant her the attenuated measure denied to her two months ago, avoiding once again exposing Hungary to the controversy over the treatment reserved for a foreign prisoner who is now also a candidate for a seat in Strasbourg.
At tomorrow’s hearing, a victim and two witnesses will be heard from the first attack accused of the accused-candidate.
Yesterday, before the provision became operational, Ilaria’s parents returned to visit her in prison, finding her in fair condition and – above all – with renewed energy in view of the new situation that she is preparing to experience as a defendant-candidate, still imprisoned but not more in prison. In addition to the defensive line to be adopted together with her lawyers to reveal that she was not involved in the accusations she has always claimed, Ilaria Salis must in fact think about how to convince – between now and 8 and 9 June, with remote public interventions, open letters and other initiatives – as many Italian voters as possible to write their name on the ballot paper. And to plan the writing of a book about her experience that a couple of publishing houses have already proposed to her.
