Ilaria Salis is free. The Hungarian police have just left her home in Budapest, where the Italian was under house arrest, after having removed her electronic bracelet. Salis called her lawyers in Italy, Eugenio Losco and Mauro Straini, to inform them that she had received the order from the Hungarian judge which freed her from House arrest.
The request for release was filed by his Hungarian lawyer Gyorgy Magyar immediately after her election as an MEP for the Alleanza Verdi Sinistra. The Milanese teacher can therefore return to Italy, after approximately a year and a half spent in detention in Hungary. Salis 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: since 23 May she had been under arrest in an apartment, hosted by an Italian family.
After the election in Brussels with over 175 thousand preferencesSalis was waiting for the proclamation and therefore for the documents certifying his status as European parliamentarian. Her family had already bought tickets for her to join her in Budapest, to be with her on Monday, her 40th birthday. And instead they will be able to celebrate it in Italy. Only yesterday the right arm of Viktor Orbánthe undersecretary of the presidency of the Hungarian government Gergely Gulyashad asked the European Parliament to revoke the immunity of the newly elected member: “The competent Hungarian authority should ask the European Parliament for revocation of immunityand if a large majority of the European Parliament does not consider acceptable physical abuse and doesn’t want it leave unpunished this type of serious crime, then immunity will be revoked and the criminal proceedings can continue during the term,” he said Gulyas, during a press conference in which he answered a question about the election of the Milanese teacher. Salis was detained in Budapest on charges of assaulting gods neo-Nazi militants.
