THEOn 2 October 2023 Ilaria Salis sent a memorial to her lawyers through the Italian consulate in Budapest. In this letter the woman recounted the inhuman conditions to which she was subjected: «she was treated like a beast, forced to wear dirty clothes and smelly shoes that they gave me at the police station and to wear a pair of boots with stiletto heels that were not in my size.”
Ilaria Salis, the inhuman conditions of prison
These are some of the words written by Ilaria Salis, primary school teacher and militant anti-fascistwho has been locked up in the maximum security prison in Budapest for almost a year on charges of having participated in the beating of two Nazi-fascists during the so-called Day of Honour, a commemoration that brings together hundreds of Hitler worshipers in Budapest every February 11th.
Ilaria Salis appeared in the courtroom in chains, with handcuffs on her wrists and her feet tied by leather shackles with padlocks. (ANSA/RAINEWS +++ NPK +++)
The teacher’s letter from the cell
The trial opened on January 29 and also became a political case. On the desk of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, in fact, there is a letter from a desperate father which asks the Government to do something after months and months of silence. And now, the prime minister with the Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and Justice Nordio have begun diplomatic relations with the president of the country Viktor Orban.
Bedbugs, mice and cockroaches
In the letter, testimony that the Italian authorities had known about Salis’ situation since at least the beginning of October, the woman describes a ruthless environment: «I stayed for 5 weeks without receiving a change of sheets; for the first 3 months I have been tormented by bed bug bites. In addition to bedbugs, the cells and corridors are full of cockroaches and mice are roaming around.”
Just one hour of fresh air a day
Salis further writes that «they spend 23 hours a day in the cell because there is only one hour of fresh air a day. And then the humiliation of being dragged to the hearings tied and kept on a leash by an escort officer, as shown in the images that went around Europe and the world.
The hope of alternative measures
In Monday’s hearing Ilaria Salis declared herself innocent: the trial, in any case, was adjourned tol 24 May, so the woman will remain in prison until that date. Salis rejected the plea deal to 11 years in prison offered by the prosecutor’s office, a punishment considered disproportionate for an attack that caused the victims a few days of prognosis. Italy summoned the Hungarian ambassador to Rome to demand an account of Salis’s detention conditions propose alternative measures to prison. The hope is to be able to serve the sentence, if it arrives, under house arrest.
iO Donna © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED