An Italian antifascist activist who was brought in chains to a court in Hungary for allegedly attacking neo-Nazis has written a letter denouncing the degrading conditions in which she has been held in prison for nearly a year as outrage grows over her case at home.
Images of Ilaria Salis, 39, with her hands cuffed and chained and her feet locked together as she sat in court, made the front pages of Italy’s newspapers and triggered a formal diplomatic protest to Hungary this week from the Italian government.
Salis, a teacher from Monza, near Milan, was arrested in Budapest in February last year after a counter-demonstration against a neo-Nazi rally.
She was charged with three counts of attempted assault and accused of being part of an extreme leftwing organisation.
She denies the charges, which could see her jailed for up to 11 years.
“For a total of one month, I have been with another inmate in cells that measure less than 7 sq metres, excluding the bathroom,” Salis wrote in a letter in October, first published on Wednesday by the television broadcaster La7. “You spend 23 hours out of 24 in a completely closed cell … Besides the bedbugs, the cells and corridors are full of cockroaches and mice.
“I found myself without toilet paper, soap and sanitary pads,” she added.
Salis said she was supposed to undergo a medical examination last March for a breast ultrasound as she allegedly has a lump. “Only in mid-June did they finally take me to a clinic where they performed an ultrasound and mammogram … But I have not received any written report, which has instead been delivered to the prison doctor, who refuses to hand it over to my lawyer.”
The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has raised the case with her rightwing nationalist Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orbán, but the case is seen politically difficult for her and the deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, who have close ties with him.
The Hungarian government on Wednesday defended its treatment of Salis. “Sure, she was restrained in the courtroom, and yes, she had already spent 11 months detained,” Hungary’s government spokesperson, Zoltán Kovács, wrote on X. “But ‘inhumane’? Not really, no. Taken seriously due to the severity of the crime she’s charged with? More likely.”
Her father, Roberto Salis, has said his daughter was treated “like an animal”, while the Italian foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, told RAI radio that the teacher’s treatment was “inappropriate”.
“We are in the European Union and there are citizens’ rights that must be respected,” Tajani said on Tuesday.
The Hungarian charge d’affaires was summoned to the Italian foreign ministry on Tuesday to give an explanation.
The Hungarian prison service called the allegations made in both countries’ media “lies” after organising a press visit to the cell Salis shares with seven other detainees.
Meloni, the leader of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy party, has been close to Orbán but the two have diverged over Ukraine, with Rome sending money and weapons to Kyiv, while Orbán vetoed in December a multibillion-euro EU aid package to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s invasion.
Meloni and Orbán met again early on Thursday before this week’s extraordinary European summit on the EU budget and aid to Ukraine, sources said. The two leaders had already met at the central Brussels hotel where Meloni is staying. After the first meeting, Orbán said he would act to ensure Salis would receive “fair treatment”.
“The only thing I can legitimately to do in the case of Ilaria Salis is to exert influence so that she gets fair treatment,” said Orbán, adding that the Hungarian judiciary is independent from the executive.
Lawyers acting for Salis said on Wednesday they were considering appealing to the European court of human rights over the alleged violation by Hungary of article 3 of the European convention on human rights protecting individuals against inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
“We are assessing the possibility of making an immediate appeal to the European court in Strasbourg for the violation of article 3 of the European convention on human rights, for which Hungary has already been condemned on other occasions,” Eugenio Losco, one of the lawyers assisting Salis, told the Italian news agency Ansa.
The case is at the centre of political row in Italy, too, with Salvini and his League party repeatedly criticising Salis and hindering the negotiations. Salvini said that Salis was part of a group that damaged a gazebo used by the rightwing League party in Monza in February 2017.
However, Salis’s lawyers said she had been acquitted in relation to that case.
Salis’s father said on Thursday that the family was going to sue Salvini for defamation.
