The Italian government has many good reasons for asking “not to politicise” the legal case of Ilaria Salis. He wants to turn off the spotlight, move in silence, and this is basically what diplomacy manuals have always advised. Especially if it helps put Viktor Orban’s embarrassing tripping of Giorgia Meloni behind us: the only request made two months ago by the prime minister on a visit to Budapest, namely to give Salis a dignified treatment, and therefore to avoid chains on her feet and the leash, yesterday she was blatantly ignored. Shackles on feet and wrists. Leash “like dogs”, protests the father, Roberto Salis. And not by choice of the Budapest court, but of the Hungarian penitentiary system, which responds directly to the Orban government.
Budapest, Ilaria Salis is taken back to the cell held by the chains by the officers
Around the prime minister they spread their arms disconsolately. There are those who try to point to the girl’s father and the center-left as the main causes of the problem: “They attacked Orban, turned on unnecessary spotlights, complicated our work.” But the truth – as a source close to Palazzo Chigi recognizes – is that the invitations to “not politicise” the matter, repeated yesterday by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, were already out of time. The judicial fate of Salis has been a political issue in Hungary for some weeks now. Orban faces internal pressure from the “Our Homeland Movement”Our Country Movement, a radical nationalist party that is trying to drain him of support from the right in Parliament, pushing him to use a hard fist. On the other hand, in Hungary, as in Italy, the European elections are approaching.
Last Tuesday, Orban was overwhelmed by a major scandal. One of his new and most fierce opponents, Peter Magyar, published online an audio recording in which the former Minister of Justice, Judit Varga, accused Orban loyalists of having falsified the documents of an investigation into a case, without his knowledge. of corruption at the Ministry of Justice. And the heavy shadow that has grown over the principle of independence of the judicial system does not help to calm the climate around the Salis case. In the messages that the Italian embassy in Budapest sent to the Farnesina, the Hungarian “rubber wall” against which Italian diplomats have been clashing for some time clearly emerges.
The Attorney General of Milan, Tarfusser: “Is the Marchesi case a mirror image of that of Ilaria Salis? It seems to me that Hungary is far from the idea of a common European judicial system.” By Andrea Siravo
However, the Foreign Ministry’s irritation remains at the presence of a centre-left delegation in the courtroom in Budapest, at the attacks against Orban and at the request to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights. The PD’s idea of nominating Salis for the European elections, in order to grant her parliamentary immunity, is the biggest mistake for Tajani and he tries to stop it: «If they want to nominate her, the process will transform into a political clash, and it political conflict doesn’t help.” Thesis on which the M5S also agrees: “she should not be a candidate, we would do her harm.” But the Dems don’t abandon the idea and keep up the pressure, especially on Meloni. The secretary of the Democratic Party Elly Schlein speaks of «an inadmissible slap in the face of the rights of a detained person, one of our compatriots. We expect Giorgia Meloni’s government to react immediately.” Also speaking is the Hungarian writer Edith Bruck, guest of The horse and the tower, to «beg the judicial authority, President Orban, to release Salis, who protested against a group of neo-Nazis in Budapest. Precisely against those who destroyed my family, deprived me of all my rights. And – he adds – the Italian government must also do more”.
Ilaria Salis chained in court, here is the case that shakes the European Union
Tajani assures us that “we will continue to protest” against ankle shackles and leashes. “But if we want to bring her back to Italy, we must act with diplomacy, seriousness and prudence.” In short, no electoral campaign. Who knows, therefore, how you will have received the exit of the Northern League allies on Salis: «Let’s not call her teacher anymore, out of respect for Italian teachers – asks the group leader in the Culture commission Rossano Sasso -. Someone who has multiple criminal convictions in Italy, who has many complaints, definitively convicted, arrested in Hungary, I wouldn’t want her as a teacher for my children.”