Ilaria Salis has returned to Italy. The far-left activist arrived in the late afternoon, around 7.00 pm, at her parents’ house in Monza after her release from prison in recent days in Budapest and the recognition of parliamentary immunity by the judge. The thirty-nine year old arrived in a car, a Volvo, together with her father Roberto. The newly elected to the European Parliament smiled and greeted the dozens of journalists and photographers who had been waiting for her outside her house for hours.
The activist’s father, Roberto Salis, left for Budapest yesterday afternoon. The new MEP will remain in Monza for a few days, then she will be expected in Strasbourg to prepare for the first session of the European Parliament scheduled for 16 July. Even before the official proclamation of those elected, Hungary recognized Salis’s prerogatives as an EU parliamentarian, starting with immunity, with the start of the revocation of the arrests and the suspension of the trial. But the Hungarian justice system is already evaluating the next moves, starting with the request for authorization to proceed which would allow the court to continue the proceedings. Let’s remember that the Lombard teacher faces a 25-year sentence of imprisonment.
The return to Italy came the day after her return to freedom, after 489 days as a prisoner, of which 466 in prison. Ilaria Salis was arrested in the Hungarian capital on 11 February 2023 on the heavy charge of having attacked, together with other people, two far-right militants during the neo-Nazi re-enactments of the “day of honour”, reserved for the “resistance” of the SS against the advance of the Red Army during the Second World War.
The Italian, according to the prosecution, would have been part of “a criminal organization created to commit violent acts” connected to the “HammerBand” of Leipzig, a well-known German anarcho-revolutionary group. Her case attracted international attention for the first hearing of the trial, in which Salis appeared in court in Budapest in chains, hands and feet bound.
