On instructions from the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister,
Antonio Tajani
, the Secretary General of the Farnesina, Ambassador
Riccardo Guariglia
, summoned the Chargé d'Affaires of the Republic of Hungary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
"In reiterating the protest of the Italian Government for the conditions" in which
Ilaria Salis
is detained and is being held in the hearings, Guariglia "expressed the Government's firm expectation" that Salis be granted "as soon as possible a
preventive detention regime in line with European legislation, including alternative measures to prison detention
."
Meanwhile, Hungarian diplomatic sources interviewed by ANSA respond on the Salis case:
"We won't comment, they are delicate issues"
.
Budapest has also not confirmed that there is a bilateral meeting planned to discuss the case between Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian Prime Minister
Viktor Orban
on the sidelines of the summit of the 27 on Thursday in Brussels.
The Hungarian Penitentiary Service: "False about Salis' conditions".
"The accusations made by the Italian and Hungarian media" regarding the conditions of Ilaria Salis' detention "are false and the prison organization forcefully rejects them".
We read this in a note from the Hungarian state penitentiary service which brands it as "sad and immoral the fact that these slanders are reported by the press without consulting the other party".
The note cites the accusations of Carmen Giorgio, Salis' former cellmate, who spoke of beds full of bedbugs, mice, mistreatment and the use of chains by the Budapest prison service.
The Hungarian prison system is under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior.
Salis's lawyer, ambassador supports house arrest.
"There was a first meeting with the ambassador and for the first time there is a concrete interest in supporting our request that Ilaria return home and be released. And this can be achieved with the measure of house arrest in Italy" .
Eugenio Losco, one of the Italian lawyers of Ilaria Salis, who has been detained in Hungary for 11 months on charges of having participated in the attack on two right-wing extremists, explained to ANSA in this way the face-to-face meeting he had today with the ambassador
Manuel Jacoangeli,
together with Ilaria's father.
"Today the ambassador has a first meeting at the Hungarian Ministry of Justice which will address the case."
M5S asks Meloni for information.
"Yesterday's shocking images of
Ilaria Salis
, shackled in an undignified manner in the court of a country of which Giorgia Meloni boasts of being a friend, leave us astounded. When the Chamber opens we will immediately ask the Prime Minister for urgent information. The gravity of the situation requires immediate information and interventions. We want to understand if the government, through the Farnesina, already knew about Ilaria's condition. We hope that Giorgia Meloni will put the interests of Italian citizens before those of Orban."
Thus
Francesco Silvestri
,
M5S
group leader in the Chamber, told Ansa.
The father denounces: "The embassy knew my daughter was in chains.
"I believe that the Italian embassy participated in at least four hearings in which my daughter was brought before the judge in these conditions.
Until October 12, when my daughter wrote a letter, we had no evidence of the treatment our daughter was undergoing.
The only ones who knew and didn't say anything were the people from the Italian Embassy in Hungary." Roberto Salis, the father of Ilaria, who was shown yesterday in chains in front of the Budapest court, told Agorà Rai Tre.
Tajani, only learned yesterday about Salis's hand and foot handcuffs.
We saw the accompaniment with hand and foot cuffs yesterday, I didn't know and had never been informed about this.
I honestly didn't know how the prisoner was transported.
We have asked and protested that this should not happen again, "let's see what they will do next time". Thus the Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajani, speaking about the Salis case while leaving Palazzo Chigi at the end of the meeting of the Council of Ministers. "The consular visits were always made, all the things she asked for were brought to the prisoner, we had no news of any particular detention treatments".
Video Ilaria Salis, Tajani: 'The competence is Hungarian, we cannot do more''
Tajani, "Orban had nothing to do with it".
"Have I spoken to Meloni" about the case of Ilaria Salis "given the relationship with Orban? If we want to talk about the law, Orban has nothing to do with it. It's not that the government decides the trial. The judiciary is independent".
"The problem - explains the head of the Farnesina - is to see whether the rules were respected before or after, it's not that we can intervene, Hungary is a sovereign state. We can only protest" about the methods of treatment of prisoners .
At lunchtime "our ambassador asked the Hungarian Minister of Justice to ask the Attorney General to evaluate the conditions of Ilaria Salis's detention and to report back to him promptly. The minister assured him that he will call him back immediately after speaking again with the Attorney General" which "he has already done".
Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said this in his replies to the hearing at the Foreign Affairs Commissions.
"We are waiting for a response," he added.
Lollobrigida: "I haven't seen the photos, I'm going to look at them."
"I haven't seen them, I'm going to see them. I don't comment on things I haven't seen."
This was said by the Minister of Agriculture Francesco Lollobrigida, a member of Fratelli d'Italia, responding in the Chamber to reporters who asked if he had seen the images of Ilaria Salis in court in Hungary.
Amnesty International, rule on house arrest may be applied.
"Regarding the case of Ilaria Salis, a rule could be applied, the 2009 framework decision of the European Council on the mutual recognition of decisions on 'alternative measures to precautionary detention', which in these cases provides for the prisoner a series of alternative measures, such as house arrest. It may not necessarily be applicable only to a final sentence, but also before. It is certainly a controversial issue, because a recent ruling by the Supreme Court has underlined that - in the scope of application - the relevant legislative decree of 2016 refers exclusively to measures non-custodial precautionary measures".
This is what the spokesperson for Amnesty International Italia, Riccardo Noury, claims.
Democratic jurists, the European Community provides for house arrest.
They denounce the "terrible conditions" of Ilaria Salis's detention and "the dehumanizing and prohibited use in our courts of handcuffs and leashes for life", constraints with which yesterday the Milanese anti-fascist teacher detained in Hungary for 11 months was brought to prison courtroom in Budapest, furthermore the 'Democratic Jurists' - with two lawyers from Venice admitted to the trial as international observers - recall that "the European Community has established the possibility of obtaining house arrest in one's own State, precisely so that unequal treatment does not occur between European citizens, whose risk of flight must not act as a discriminatory element".
Tajani, this time he went too far.
On the case of Ilaria Salis, brought to court in chains in Budapest, "this time it seems to me that it has gone too far": it is a "violation of community standards" and is not "in harmony with our legal civilisation": the said the Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajani, in an interview with Radio Anch'io.
According to Tajani, "lawyers must ask for house arrest in Italy", and he also said that the Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio, met with Ilaria's father, Roberto, and is following the case closely.
"I asked for absolute respect for community law, because dragging a prisoner in that way seems to me to be out of place, not in harmony with our community law" and "there must always be respect for a prisoner".
If Ilaria Salis is found guilty, she "must serve the sentence, but there must be respect for the person, even for a prisoner, like for any human person".
"We don't want to intervene in other people's justice, but we are in the European Union and there are citizens' rights to be respected" and "our ambassador will say it" in Budapest and we will tell it to the Hungarian diplomatic representative in Italy.
Tajani said about the Salis affair "we have already spoken with the Hungarian government. At the last European Council on Foreign Affairs I delivered a document to the Hungarian government, asking it to ensure compliance with the rules".
"We will not leave our fellow citizen in a condition of non-compliance" and "we cannot compromise on this".
The deputy general prosecutor of Milan, Hungary does not respond to the conditions in prison
"It seems to me to be a seriously deficient response compared to the detailed questions posed by the Court of Appeal; very precise questions were given very imprecise answers" on the conditions of prisons in Hungary.
Milan's deputy prosecutor
Cuno Tarfusser
explains this regarding the report received today from the Hungarian authorities for the proceedings before the Milanese judges who will have to decide whether or not to extradite 23-year-old
Gabriele Marchesi
to Hungary , also accused like Ilaria Salis of having attacked neo-Nazis during a counter-demonstration in Budapest on February 11, 2023. “I will insist on demanding that Marchesi not be handed over,” the PC said.
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