Representatives of Hungarian Prime
Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party told a plenary session of
the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday that Budapest
has requested that the parliamentary immunity of Italian MEP
Ilaria Salis be revoked.
Salis was released from house arrest in Hungary, where she was
on trial for allegedly involvement in an assault on far-right
demonstrators in February 2023, after being elected as a new
member of the European Parliament for the Italian Green and Left
Alliance in June.
Her allegedly inhumane detention conditions during a 16-month
spell in a Hungarian jail had provoked protests from Italy.
During her trial she was also led into court on a chain with her
ankles and wrists cuffed, a procedure Hungary says is standard,
but which caused widespread shock and indignation here.
"As I have already said several times, I hope that Parliament
will choose to defend the rule of law and human rights without
giving in to the arrogance of an 'illiberal democracy' in an
autocratic drift which, also through the mouths of its own
leaders, has already declared guilty me on several occasions
before a sentence has been given," Salis wrote in response to
the request for her parliamentary immunity to be revoked.
"Not only is my personal future at stake, but also, and above
all, what we want Europe, increasingly threatened by
authoritarian political forces, to be is too".
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