As of: February 13, 2024, 12:50 p.m
By: Kilian Beck
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Ilaria Salis from Monza was led into the courtroom in chains in Hungary.
© Andrea BERNARDI/AFP/TG3
Orbán's justice system appears to be mistreating an Italian anti-fascist.
Your compatriots are outraged.
Now the right-wing radical head of government has to stand up for them.
Rome/Budapest – As a 19-year-old, she described the fascist mass murderer Benito Mussolini as a “good politician,” and now she is campaigning for an anti-fascist imprisoned in Hungary: Giorgia Meloni.
Under pressure from her own population, Italy's head of government now has to mediate in a delicate judicial case.
It's about the imprisoned Illaria Saris, who is now even causing a crunch in the relationship between Meloni and Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Orbán's justice system indicted 39-year-old primary school teacher Illaria Saris at the end of January.
The accusation: She is said to have attacked two neo-Nazis at the right-wing extremist SS “Day of Honor” memorial march in Budapest in 2023.
Salis denies this.
Hungary's judiciary is seen as politically instrumentalized.
The teacher faces up to 24 years in prison.
Her report on pre-trial detention conditions sparked a wave of sympathy in Italy.
This was reported by Spiegel
, among others
.
Anti-fascist Salis insists on her innocence – Italian senator dismantles the accusation
Salis pleaded innocence and now faces a longer prison sentence if convicted, Italian television station
RAI
reported .
The Hungarian justice system imposes disproportionately high penalties.
This was criticized, among others, by Julia Unterberger, member of the Italian Senate for the South Tyrolean People's Party, according to the
Neue Südtiroler Tageszeitung
.
According to this, the right-wing extremists who Salis is said to have attacked only suffered minor injuries that healed within “five to seven days”.
According to the lawyer Unterberger, this would be a “minor bodily harm” that “cannot even be prosecuted” in Italy without the person concerned filing a criminal complaint.
Hungary violates every “fundamental principle of the modern constitutional state”.
For years, the EU and human rights organizations have criticized the lack of independence of the Hungarian judiciary from Orbán's authoritarian Fidesz party.
“Day of Honor”: Neo-Nazi march in honor of the SS and the Wehrmacht under Hungarian police protection
The prosecution claims that a large group of anti-fascists attacked a total of nine neo-Nazis in February 2023, in some cases seriously injuring them.
The Budapest public prosecutor's office accuses Saris and two co-accused Germans of "attempted life-threatening bodily harm and forming a criminal organization" - a maximum penalty of up to 24 years in prison, MDR
reported
.
The “Day of Honor” is considered one of the most extreme neo-Nazi marches in Europe.
Every year, hundreds of right-wing extremists, some in Waffen-SS uniforms, march through Budapest, protected by the Hungarian police, wrote the
Tagesspiegel
.
Anti-fascists, including those on the radical left, have been mobilizing counter-protest for decades.
A protest for the release of Ilaria Salis in front of the Hungarian embassy in Rome.
© IMAGO/Marco Di Gianvito
Bed bugs, rats and mistreatment by staff: Hungary's prison conditions are causing criticism
The outcry from the Italian public followed the images from the first day of Salis's trial in Budapest.
The 39-year-old primary school teacher was paraded with ankle and handcuffs.
The Hungarian justice system treated her “like an animal on a leash,” Salis wrote
from prison , according to
Spiegel .
“Anyone who is accused of a crime loses his dignity,”
RAI
commented on the message the Orbán regime wanted to send with the images.
Salis is also said to have been treated inhumanely while in custody: bed bugs, rats and mistreatment by security guards were part of everyday life, the television station reported.
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This corresponds to several reports by the Budapest human rights organization Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC) since Orbán came to power in 2010. According to HHC expert Zsolt Zádori in the
Tagesspiegel
, the shackling during the trial is “unnecessary” and therefore, according to the established case law of the European Court of Human Rights Violation of fundamental rights.
By the way, the Budapest public prosecutor's office is currently trying to get two more German left-wing radicals extradited.
According to the taz,
the Berlin Court of Appeal
is currently negotiating this .
In an open letter, the parents of those affected and ten defense lawyers feared “inhumane treatment” and “serious physical and psychological damage in prison.”
A graffiti in solidarity with the imprisoned anti-fascist near the Hungarian embassy in Rome.
© ANDREA BERNARDI/AFP
Meloni talks to Orbán in a Brussels hotel bar - Foreign Minister Tajani finds clear words
Italy's right-wing extremist Prime Minister Meloni has come under increasing pressure in recent weeks to stand up for the Italian citizen.
She spoke to the autocrat Orbán at a Brussels hotel bar about prison conditions,
Spiegel
reported .
How strongly she influenced her counterpart remained unclear.
Hungarian authorities dismissed all allegations as lies and Orbán's propagandists called Salis a "liar."
Her right-wing conservative coalition partner Antonio Tajani (Forza Italia) became clearer: He called the treatment of Salis, to
RAI
, “inadmissible and disproportionate in relation to the procedural regulations and not in accordance with the EU directive on pre-trial detainees”.
He emphasized that this also means “alternative measures to detention”.
The Hungarian ambassador was also summoned.
According to
Spiegel
, in the words of the medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri, Salis wrote from her pre-trial detention in Hungary: She hoped to “see the stars again.”
(
KB
)