Ilaria Salis she is free: the Hungarian police have just left her residence in Budapest after having removed her electronic bracelet.
The request for release was filed by his Hungarian lawyer Gyorgy Magyar immediately after her election as an MEP with Avs and this morning she was released from house detention.
The 39-year-old called her lawyers in Italy, Eugenio Losco And Mauro Strainito notify them that they had received the order from the Hungarian judge who freed her from house arrest where she had been since May 15, the day she was released from prison.
You can leave Hungary immediately
Ilaria Salis can therefore now return to Italy. The Avs MEP was arrested on 11 February 2023 on charges of being part of a criminal association and of having participated in two attacks against three far-right militants in Budapest. She remained in prison for over 15 months until the request made by her lawyers to be able to serve the precautionary measure under house arrest was accepted.
Her family had already bought tickets to join her to celebrate her 40th birthday on Monday but now Salis will be able to celebrate it in Italy.
Now the questions about the trial and immunity
Yesterday Ilaria’s father, Roberto Salis, for the continuation of the trial he feared the problem of the proclamation of the election of his daughter who will enjoy parliamentary immunity only from the moment of her proclamation as MEP. But the Budapest judge in the meantime did not bat an eyelid on the revocation of house arrest and immediately accepted the request of his lawyers.
Roberto Salis’ concern arises from the words of Orban government spokesperson Gergely Gulyßs according to which “the competent Hungarian authority should ask the European Parliament to lift the immunity” for his daughter Ilaria.
It must be the competent national authority (not the court “which cannot ask for anything but must respect European and Hungarian rules”) to possibly request the revocation of immunity which then falls to the European Parliament to vote by majority. If it is approved, the process continues, otherwise, Gulyßs recalled, it resumes at the end of the mandate.
Bonelli and Fratoianni: “We are waiting for you”
“Finally! We are happy with the news that comes from Budapest, MEP Ilaria Salis can now return to Italy and will be able to carry out her new role for which hundreds of thousands of voters have indicated her”, say in a joint note Angelo Bonelli and Nicola Fratoianni of Avs. “Our thanks go to all those who, like us, have been indignant in recent months and have not resigned themselves to the terrible condition in which she was held in Orban’s prisons. Now she will be able to defend together with us the civil and social rights of weaker. We wait for it”, they conclude.
