By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – An Italian anti-fascist activist, who allegedly participated in attacks against suspected “neo-Nazis,” was released from a high-security prison in Hungary’s capital and placed under house arrest, Italian sources told Worthy News.
Ilaria Salis, who spent 15 months in Budapest’s Gyorskocsi Utca jail, was freed Thursday following international pressure.
The 39-year-old teacher is a member of Antifa — short for “anti-fascists” — an umbrella movement for far-left and often violent militant groups.
She is accused of joining a violent counter-protest in Budapest ahead of the so-called “Day of Honour” events organized by Hungarian extreme-right groups and neo-Nazis.
The events commemorate the attempt by German and Hungarian forces in February 1945 to break through the lines of the Soviet Red Army that had encircled the Hungarian capital during what is known as the Siege of Budapest
Salis was among 20 Antifa members who arrived in Budapest last February to attack suspected “neo-Nazis and neo-Nazi sympathizers,” according to investigators.
The Antifa activists reportedly assaulted their victims using steel batons, rubber hammers, and gas sprays, wearing gloves lined with lead, and on one occasion, an unidentified sharp object to inflict stab wounds.
THREE FOREIGNERS
Of the three foreigners on trial—two Germans, a male and a female, and the Italian Ilaria Salis—the man, Tobias Edelhoff, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years in prison.
Both the defense and the prosecutor appealed the verdict. The German woman, Christina Mehwald, and Salis pleaded “not guilty.”
Salis’s conditions of detention sparked protests from Italy and other countries after she was repeatedly led into court on a chain with her hands and ankles cuffed, a procedure Hungary says is “standard” but which observers condemned.
The Green-Left Alliance (AVS) recently made her one of their candidates for next month’s European elections, which could grant her immunity from prosecution.
A Hungarian court subsequently accepted Salis’s plea to be released to house arrest.
Her family and supporters hope this will make it possible for her to apply to return to Italy and stay under house arrest at home.
“Finally, we have the opportunity to embrace Ilaria again,” the woman’s father, Roberto Salis, told the Italian news agency ANSA.“Let’s hope this is a temporary stage before finally seeing her in Italy.”
SALIS HANDCUFFED
The images of Salis, handcuffed at the wrists and ankles and held in chains by a policeman, provoked criticism from Italy and international observers. “I know that I am on the right side of history, and I don’t want to be judged for my political views,” Salis said.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a close ally of Hungary’s hardline Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, suggested to Salis’ family that they apply for house arrest in Budapest.
However, Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said he was “shocked by the Italian reactions (…) This lady has been presented here in Italy as a kind of victim, a martyr,” Szijjártó said.
“It is surprising that Italy tries to interfere in a Hungarian court case. This lady came to Hungary with a clear plan to attack innocent people in the streets as part of a radical left-wing organization”, he stressed.
The minister recalled that “Those people were almost killed [by Antifa].”
He stressed that “No extreme left-wing group should see Hungary as a kind of boxing ring where they come to plan to beat someone to death (…) I sincerely hope this lady will receive the deserved punishment in Hungary”.
Hungary, a European Union member, has come under international pressure to improve conditions in its overcrowded prisons.
MANY RATS
A former cellmate of Salis claimed that she was intentionally being held in a cell “full of rats and insects.”
The Hungarian prosecutor has asked for a prison term of 11 years, but Salis’s father says she risks as long as 24 years in jail on charges of attempted murder.
Hungary, a European Union member, has come under international pressure to improve prison conditions.
The country “has failed to implement judgments of the European Court of Human Rights that established large-scale rights violations concerning detention conditions,” said the Hungarian Helsinki Committee (HHC) advocacy group.
HHC expressed concern about the “surge in the number of persons detained in Hungarian penitentiaries, which led to overcrowding and substandard detention conditions.”
The group said, “There is still a lack of effective remedy for prisoners against decisions taken in the prison system.”
Copyright 1999-2024 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
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