After 489 days of hell, Ilaria Salis returns to freedom
As of Friday morning, 489 days after her arrest, Ilaria Salis was once again a free woman. Before noon, two police officers rang at the front door of the Budapest apartment where the Italian woman had been held in house arrest for just over three weeks and dismantled her ankle monitor, according to the latest ruling by Judge Joseph Sos.
In the ruling, some 10 pages long in total, the judge referenced a ruling by the European Court of Justice that MEP status should be deemed to be in effect from the moment of election, without the need to wait for it to be officially formalized. Thus, as a result of the 176,000 votes she received as part of the Left Green Alliance (AVS) list, Salis has regained her freedom and was expected to return to Italy as early as Saturday: a moment of great happiness for her, and a slap in the face to those who have spent months lamenting how wrong it was to politicize the affair.
Ilaria turned 40 on Monday, and her parents had already bought tickets to go visit her in Hungary. Roberto Salis, her father, ended up leaving early and was already in Budapest on Friday.
“We’ll celebrate at home,” he said, his voice understandably shaking with emotion. “I’m going to pick her up and bring her back. I’m trying to arrange the trip back as fast as possible. I’ve been working behind the scenes, but I didn’t expect her to be released as early as today (on Friday, n. ed.). But then, the Hungarian lawyer called me to tell me that the police were on their way to release her.”
There were congratulations from Italian Ambassador Manuel Jacoangeli, who said in a press release that Salis had expressed her gratitude “for the great support she always received, starting from her time in prison.” The trial of the AVS MEP is officially suspended: it will continue when her term in Strasbourg ends, or perhaps sooner, although the road ahead looks complicated.
Hungary is expected to request the revocation of the immunity acquired by Ilaria Salis after the election; however, a decision on this has not been made, despite the solemn proclamations of Orbán’s spokesmen and the not-so-hidden hopes of much of the Italian right. Specifically, the process stipulates first of all that the Budapest prosecutor’s office must express its intention to pursue the case. At that point, the ball would pass to the Hungarian government, which would have to forward a request to the European Parliament, to be subjected to a floor vote. Even in the event that the majority should decide to authorize suspending her immunity, there is a further step: the Hungarian judicial authority would have to send a European arrest warrant to Italy, on which an Italian court of appeals would have the final say – namely, the Court of Milan, which has territorial jurisdiction over the matter in question.
Those who would decide would be the same judges who on March 28 denied Hungary’s request for the extradition of another Italian anti-fascist, Gabriele Marchesi, accused of the same crimes Ilaria Salis was charged with, namely assaulting some neo-Nazis in February 2023, as the “Day of Honor” commemorating the SS was taking place in Budapest. The reason for the Milan court’s rejection was the lack of clarity offered by Budapest about the situation in its prisons. In a number of letters she wrote from inside Gyorskocsi Utca Prison, Ilaria Salis described cramped and overcrowded rooms, rats and cockroaches, appalling sanitary conditions, rotten food and inmates put in chains. In January, the wider world got a glimpse of this reality when images were released of the Italian woman making her entrance into the courthouse in shackles and held on a leash by a guard.
This marked the beginning of a campaign that, first of all, succeeded in awakening the Italian government from its indifference to the affair (at least in part, that is, and not always with visible results), then managed to reach the Quirinale Palace, with President Sergio Mattarella going so far as to call Roberto Salis personally to express his support. And, finally, it led to the many votes for Ilaria last Sunday, contributing in no small measure to AVS’s electoral success.
Now, a new story begins, featuring the honorable MEP Ilaria Salis, a member of the European Left. Her work will focus first and foremost on prisoners’ rights and anti-fascism, which – as she told il manifesto – she considers to be “a culture that is living, heartfelt and in tune with the great issues of today: social inequality, discrimination, war and climate change.” It’s the start on a road to freedom to come.
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