Ilaria Salis, the 39-year-old Italian anti-fascist teacher, who has denounced the inhumane and degrading conditions she endured in Viktor Orban’s far-right Hungary, has been elected in the 2024 European elections.
The young teacher will be a member of the European Parliament with the Greens and Left Alliance (AVS) which included her on its ballot as a leader, and now hopes to be granted immunity under EU law, which would increase the pressure on Hungary’s far-right government.
“We elected six MEPs, and one of them is Ilaria Salis,” said Nicola Fratoianni, one of the party leaders and secretary of the Italian Left, in a statement on Monday. “Now we want Ilaria here in Italy, free and with immunity, ready to carry out her mandate.”
Ilaria Salis appeared in a Budapest, Hungary, court on May 24, 2024.
“They accused us of exploiting her candidacy, we heard a lot. We did the right thing, though, Ilaria made it,” he concluded.
“She is a MEP who should be released immediately, because we certainly won’t wait for the announcement of the elected representatives,” said Angelo Bonelli, a member of the Greens and Left Alliance, during a press conference to comment on the election results.
The 39-year-old Italian teacher received 173,000 votes, and according to the press, she should be released from Hungarian justice as soon as the European Parliament officially announces her election.
Analysts point out that her candidacy, to a large extent, is also responsible for the increase in the alliance’s vote share.
The timeline
Ilaria Salis was arrested on February 11, 2023, where, as every year, Hitler nostalgics gathered in the Hungarian capital’s, friendly to them, lands, for the “Day of Honour”. A far-right event commemorating the failed attempt by Nazis and their Hungarian allies to escape from Budapest during the city’s siege by the Red Army in 1945.
There was tension and riots, and a few hours later, Salis was arrested while in a taxi with two other German anti-fascists.
She was charged with participating in an ultra-left organisation and attempted aggravated bodily harm in four attacks.
In the case of two of the charges, it was proven that she had nothing to do with them, as she was not in Hungary when they took place.
However, the prosecution for her involvement in an attack on two neo-Nazis remained without supporting evidence.
Ilaria Salis’s trial is ongoing, and after spending more than a year in prison, she was placed under house arrest last month. The charges could lead to a prison sentence of up to 11 years, and the next hearing is set for September.
There has been worldwide stir regarding the conditions of her imprisonment.
In a letter to her lawyer after seven and a half months in prison dated October 2, 2023, Ilaria Salis denounced the inhumane detention conditions she endured, as well as the lack of basic hygiene, mixed-sex cells, which are overcrowded with 90-100 inmates, with men’s cells right next to women’s cells, and a single guard, as well as bugs, cockroaches, and mice.
The newspaper La Repubblica acquired this letter, part of which is shown below.
She also complained about non translation of official court documents, interrogations without the presence of a lawyer and without an interpreter, as well as not being allowed to contact her family for months.
“For more than six months I couldn’t communicate with my family. On September 1 (after being detained for six months) I received permission to contact my parents!” her letter mentions.
Salis also denounces the censorship and surveillance of her correspondence, even with her lawyer and the consulate. “Correspondence with lawyers and the consulate should not be surveilled. However, this happened to me. A letter I had sent to my lawyer, which was incorrectly addressed, was returned to the sender with an open envelope.”
Inadequate sanitary conditions
As she states in the letter, during the hearing to confirm her arrest, her clothes were confiscated, and she was forced to wear “dirty, used clothes that smelled bad”, which the police gave her.
She also mentions that they gave her “a pair of boots that weren’t her size”. “For the first five weeks, until the Italian consulate was finally allowed to visit me and give me the first package, I was left without a change of clothes (including underwear) with only the dirty clothes and the oversized boots.”
She also reports on the lack of sanitary conditions. “Upon my arrival, I was not given any personal hygiene kit (…) For the first month, I was left without toilet paper, soap, and towels or cotton wool (because, unfortunately, I was also menstruating) until February 18 (…) In the cells where I was for the first two months, there were missing some cleaning tools that, according to the order, should have existed in all cells (mop, broom, bucket, pail), I asked for them several times but they were not given to me. The available space in the cell was less than 3.5 square meters. For one month, divided into three periods, I was with two other people in a cell of less than 7 square meters, excluding the bathroom,” she added to her scathing indictment.
Inadequate ventilation and overcrowding
She also complained about the lack of ventilation in the cells and overcrowding. “You spend 23 hours out of 24 in a completely closed cell. There is only one hour of yard time a day, and there is no social interaction (…) Every morning they wake us up around 5:30 a.m. (Saturdays and Sundays at 6 a.m.) and we have to get up and make our beds immediately, and then we are locked in the cell all day with nothing to do.”
“There are a total of five yards, and they are on the floor -1 in the middle of the horseshoe-shaped building, so the sun almost never shines there. They are completely paved, with no benches, and with a wire mesh above. Two of them are very small: a little more than 25 square meters, and up to 15 people can walk in them, so it’s almost impossible to move,” she added.
“On some days, yard time coincides with shower time or shopping time, and nothing here has a fixed schedule, so yard time or shower time is often missed. Often, yard time coincides with shopping time or sheet changing time, and if you’re not in your cell at the right time, these two are also missed,” she noted.
Cockroaches, mice, and bedbugs
But apart from all that, there was also the problem with bedbugs, cockroaches, and mice. “For the first three months, I suffered from bedbug bites, which caused an allergic reaction (…) and despite my repeated requests and the visible signs on my face, I was neither given antihistamines nor cream for all this time. For bedbugs, the prison carries out pest control every month: they let us out in the corridor only as long as it takes to spray the poison, and then they lock us back in our cells, forcing us to ‘get drunk’ every time. Every time I struggle to breathe, my nose burns, and I get dizzy,” she said.
“In addition to bedbugs, the cells and corridors are infested with cockroaches. On the other hand, in the outside corridor, right outside the building where we have to pass to go to the yard, mice often roam.”
Inmates handcuffed and chained
She also describes the images that came to light, showing her in court handcuffed and chained. “In addition to the handcuffs, they put on a leather belt with buckles, to which the handcuffs are attached. The legs are also shackled together: around the ankles, they put two locks, which are joined by a chain about 25 centimetres long,” she initially wrote.
“Then, they put an additional handcuff on one wrist, to which a leather strap is attached, which the escort officer holds at the end. All this material weighs a few kilos, and being shackled at the ankles like this only allows you to take very small steps (…) Shackled like this, I had to go up and down several stairs. I remained shackled like this throughout the hearing and was also kept shackled like this during the examination by the anthropologist,” she emphasised.
(information from in.gr)in cyprus
