Hungary has known as on the EU to strip parliamentary immunity from the Italian MEP Ilaria Salis, who was detained for 16 months in Budapest after an alleged assault on neo-Nazis.
The case of Salis, 39, a instructor from Monza, close to Milan, sparked diplomatic protests and anger in Italy after she was introduced final January to court docket in Hungary in chains, her palms cuffed and ft locked collectively.
Salis was arrested in Budapest in February 2023 after a counter-demonstration towards a neo-Nazi rally, and charged with three counts of tried assault and membership of an excessive leftwing organisation. She denied the costs, which carried a jail time period of as much as 11 years.
In a letter to her lawyer she described cells infested with rats and bugs, and stated she was not allowed to scrub for days at a time, or given pressing medical care.
In Might Salis was granted home arrest in Budapest, and the next month she gained a seat within the EU parliament as a candidate with the Greens and Left Alliance, granting her immunity from expenses. She was free of home arrest and returned to Italy in June.
On Tuesday, representatives of the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz social gathering instructed a plenary session of the European parliament in Strasbourg that Budapest had formally requested the withdrawal of Salis’s parliamentary immunity.
Salis wrote in a word: “As I’ve repeatedly said, I hope that the parliament chooses to defend the rule of legislation and human rights with out yielding to the vanity of an ‘intolerant democracy’ with autocratic tendencies, which, via the phrases of its personal leaders, has already declared me responsible on a number of events earlier than any verdict.”
She added: “It isn’t a coincidence that the transmission of the request to the parliament occurred on October 10, the day after my intervention within the plenary session on the Hungarian presidency, the place I strongly criticised Orbán’s actions. What’s at stake is just not solely my private future, but in addition and above all, the way forward for what we would like Europe to be.”
Reacting by way of X to that assertion, the Hungarian authorities spokesperson Zoltán Kovács accused Salis of “performing like you’re some type of sufferer”, saying it was “not solely baffling but in addition completely disgusting.”
He added: “Let me make it clear once more: you weren’t arrested to your ‘political beliefs’, you have been arrested and placed on trial for cases of armed assault on harmless Hungarian residents.”
The Hungarian parliamentarians’ request has already been communicated to the president of the European parliament, Roberta Metsola. The request will then be introduced in parliament and referred to the related parliamentary committee.
The method earlier than reaching the ultimate vote in parliament might take as much as 4 months.
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