The conditions of detention of Ilaria Salis, the 39-year-old Italian in prison in Budapest accused of attacking two right-wing extremists, shown at trial in chains, become a case. The Farnesina is asking Hungary for alternative measures to prison detention. The Hungarian Penitentiary Service speaks of “falsehoods” about detention conditions. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani reports that he only learned yesterday about the hand and foot handcuffs and specifies: “Orban has nothing to do with it. It’s not that the government decides the trial. The judiciary is independent.” Minister Lollobrigida claims not to have seen the photos of the handcuffed woman: “I’m going to see them. I don’t comment on things I haven’t seen.” All the oppositions asked for information from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
“On February 2nd I will see Ilaria Salis’ father, I couldn’t see him before because he was leaving for Hungary”, the president of the Senate said in the Chamber, Ignazio La Russa, adding that “I will give him the summary of what was said today also in the chamber”. “The dignity of prisoners”, said La Russa, is a problem that “must be close to the hearts of everyone in Hungary but also in every other part of the world, including Italy where I have news of a not very dissimilar situation, at least for the men” and not for women “with a leash but not handcuffs on their feet”.
The Hungarian Penitentiary Service: “False about Salis’ conditions”. “The accusations made by the Italian and Hungarian media” on the conditions of Ilaria Salis’ detention “are false and the prison organization forcefully rejects them”, we read in a note from the Hungarian state penitentiary service which brands the fact as “sad and immoral 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.
For further information Agenzia ANSA Strasbourg censured Hungary in 2018 for handcuffing prisoners – News – Ansa.it The Anti-torture Committee asked to avoid public exposure (ANSA)
“A wave is growing to try to discredit my daughter’s actions.” Roberto Salis, Ilaria’s father, speaks thus to Repubblica’s ‘Metropolis’ podcast. “Photos are circulating of a crime committed in Hungary for which my daughter is not accused” he added, underlining that now “the most important thing of all is to identify what the plan is to get her under house arrest in Italy and to remove her from a situation unsustainable to then carry out the process in humane conditions”. “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 that our daughter was undergoing. daughter. The only ones who knew and didn’t say anything are the people from the Italian Embassy in Hungary”, said Roberto Salis.
Video Ilaria Salis, Tajani: ‘The competence is Hungarian, we cannot do more”
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.”
Amnesty International, a rule on house arrest may be applied. “A rule could be applied, the 2009 framework decision of the European Council on mutual recognition of decisions on ‘alternative measures to pre-trial detention’, which in these cases provides for a series of alternative measures for the prisoner, such as house arrest”, argues the spokesperson for Amnesty International Italy, Riccardo Noury.
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”.
For further information Agenzia ANSA From the hostess to the girl without a veil, the cases of Italians in prison – News – Ansa.it The story of Ilaria Salis, the 39-year-old Milanese in prison in Budapest accused of attacking two right-wing extremists in the Hungarian capital, it is not the only recent case of Italians detained in prison, some of whom were released after several months… (ANSA)
Contacts between Italy and Hungary
On instructions from the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajanithe 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 precautionary detention regime in line with European legislation, including alternative measures to prison detention“.
Meanwhile, Hungarian diplomatic sources interviewed by ANSA respond: “We won’t comment, these are delicate issues”. Budapest has also not confirmed that there is a bilateral meeting planned between Meloni and the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban on the sidelines of the summit of the 27 on Thursday in Brussels.
For further information Agenzia ANSA The case of Gabriele Marchesi, ‘Budapest is silent on the conditions of prisons’ – News – Ansa.it Pg on the co-suspect under house arrest in Italy: “He should not be handed over” (ANSA)
The Salis case in the newspapers, the podcast review
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