Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban met at the Amigo hotel, in the center of Brussels, with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Among the topics of the meeting is the issue of aid to Kiev, at the center of the extraordinary EU summit scheduled for tomorrow morning. The bilateral ended after about an hour. In the meantime, French President Emmanuel Macron also arrived at the hotel that hosted the meeting.
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In any case, Ilaria Salis cannot return to Italy immediately, but her transfer to house arrest in Budapest is the first step towards, thanks to European rules, being able to leave Hungary. The government’s strategy to resolve the case of the 39-year-old from Milan runs on the double track of diplomacy and international norms. A path that however will not be easy. This is confirmed by the statement by Zoltan Kovacs, spokesperson for the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban: “The crimes in question are serious, both in Hungary and internationally. The measures adopted in the proceedings are required by law and appropriate to the seriousness of the accusation of the crime committed”. Kovacs, who questions the “credibility” of Ilaria Salis, states that in Hungarian prisons “three meals a day are provided”, furthermore “continuous hygiene checks are carried out and prisoners receive adequate medical care”.
However, something has moved, after the political storm over the images of her chained with shackles and handcuffs in the hearings at the trial and the Hungarian general prosecutor visited Ilaria in prison to check on her conditions.
The parents themselves were able to meet her. “We’re starting to see some light”, comments the somewhat relieved father, Roberto Salis, for whom there is “moderate optimism”.. The man returned from Budapest in the evening and, upon his arrival at Orio al Serio airport, said he had seen his daughter “a little wasted” on the occasion of the hearing. The man also responded briefly to Matteo Salvini by wishing him that his daughter has “a tenth of the ethical values of my daughter”, and to the Hungarian spokesman Kovacs, saying that “there are facts that are beyond words”.
But, while waiting to obtain concrete results after the channels activated by the Farnesina, on the legal front it will instead be necessary to proceed step by step: the Hungarian judges – motivating their decision on the “danger of escape” – have already rejected on three occasions (in June , last September and November) the requests for the transfer of Ilaria Salis to house arrest in Italy, made by the 39-year-old’s lawyers. And in the absence of a definitive conviction, “no international convention or other instrument allows the execution of prison-type precautionary measures in the country of origin”, reiterates the undersecretary Andrea Ostellari in the Justice commission: for this reason the request could be re-evaluated only following of a preventive application of house arrest in Hungary, upon decision of the judges. “As soon as the precautionary measure is replaced with another less afflictive one – explains the undersecretary – we will take action for its recognition and enforcement in Italy”. In that case then there would be a regulatory basis that the ministry has had in its drawer for weeks: the framework decision of the European Council for the mutual recognition between member states of decisions on alternative measures to precautionary detention. “This is the only instrument in force”, underlines Ostellari. The first step of this plan could therefore be a request from Salis’ lawyers for the judges to grant their client house arrest in Hungary, waiting for Ilaria to then be able to serve them in her own country.
“We are awaiting the moment from the institutions when this request must be presented”, explains Roberto Salis, Ilaria’s father, implying that everything is moving in a delicate entanglement made up of diplomatic relations and legal tactics. And if the plan does not come to fruition, the alternative remains of immediate appeal to the European Court in Strasbourg “for the violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which has already cost Hungary other sentences”, he says the lawyer Eugenio Losco, who for now defines this choice as “a possibility to be evaluated”.
Meanwhile, the Keeper of the Seals Nordio recently met with the board of the National Guarantor of Prisoners, who will also make a report to the Committee for the Prevention of Torture at the Council of Europe. The case will also arrive in Strasbourg on Monday afternoon, where a debate is expected to be held in the plenary of the European Chamber. The story had an echo within the same institution where the Milanese teacher is detained, accused by the judges of having attacked two far-right militants. “Her cellmates call her Joan of Arc, probably because she managed to obtain things that they were not able to obtain”, says her father Roberto Salis, for whom “some good signals are also arriving from the prison where the His condition has improved.”
The Italian ambassador also told us about the meeting with the Hungarian Minister of Justice. And I believe – concludes Ilaria’s father – that everyone is moving in the right direction”.
“The crimes in question are serious, both in Hungary and internationally. The measures adopted in the proceedings are required by law and appropriate to the seriousness of the accusation of the crime committed.” Zoltan Kovacs, Viktor Orban’s spokesperson, writes this on X on the case of Ilaria Salis. “The credibility of Ilaria Salis is highly questionable, as demonstrated, among other things, by the false statements she made about her education, her family situation and her personal relationships, which later turned out to be false,” he added .
“Left-wing media and human rights groups have launched an orchestrated attack on Hungary” aimed at “destroying good political relations” between Budapest and Rome” in the case of three foreign citizens accused of organized assault of alleged sympathizers of the far right”, we read in a note from the Hungarian government, signed by Viktor Orban’s spokesperson, which retraces the story of Ilaria Salis, Tobias Edelhoff and Anna Christina Mehwald.
Ilaria’s memorial: ‘Treated like a beast’
“I am treated like a beast on a leash”, “I have been tormented by bed bug bites for three months”, “there is little air, only that which filters through the spincino”. These are some of the passages of the memorial that Ilaria Salis wrote in her own hand and sent it to the Italian consulate on October 2nd to send it to her Italian lawyerthat the Tg La7 showed it exclusively tonight.
The text, which describes a situation marked by precarious hygienic conditions and poor nutrition, was written when Ilaria Salis had been in prison for eight months and had not yet had the opportunity to speak to her Italian lawyer. “The Hungarian lawyers – states the woman among other things regarding her condition – say that nothing can be done”.
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