Monza, 15 June 2024 – The emotion was so strong that, having arrived near the road sign that marks the border of the Municipality of Monza, Ilaria Salis she wanted to come down and take a photo. After over 16 months of detention in Hungarythe activist – and newly elected MEP – is finally returned to Italy. At 7.17pm the car in which he and his parents made the journey from Hungary arrived in via Benedetto Marcello in Monza, where do you live. This evening she will celebrate her birthday with her family 40 years.
“A nightmare has ended”
Upon returning to Italy, after a long detention in Budapest on charges of having attacked some neo-Nazis during a demonstration, Salis did not feel like talking to her parents and went home to take a shower after the journey lasted about 9 hours. “She is tired and tired from her prison period – her father Roberto tells reporters – but now that she is home she is very happy. A nightmare is over”.
However, he continues, “the process is just suspendedIlaria considers herself innocent.” Roberto Salis has announced that he will resign from his role as spokesperson for his daughter because as an MEP for Greens and Left Alliance – explains the father – “it’s up to the party. In any case we will try the possible revocation of immunity”.
The question of immunity
After his election to European Parliamentthe Hungarian judge Jozsef Sos recognized her parliamentary immunity which is entitled, by right, to every European parliamentarian and ordered his release (with removal of the electronic bracelet).
The outcome of the judicial question that has occupied Italian and Hungarian diplomacy for months, it wasn’t obvious. European law provides that sitting MEPs cannot be arrested or subjected to restrictions of their freedom for the whole of duration of the mandate, but Hungary, after the election, could have asked the European Parliament to lift its immunity. A possibility raised by the head of cabinet of the Hungarian government Gergely Gulyas. But in the end, nothing materialized.
