The father of Ilaria Salis, an Italian antifascist on trial for attacking three neoNazis in Budapest last year, said Thursday that Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani deserved no credit after she was granted house arrest Wednesday after 15 months of jail detention in cont5roversial conditions.
Roberto Salis scoffed at Tajani claiming credit for his ministry and the government, telling ANSA: "Tajani talks about the merits of the embassy and the government, but he should tell me exactly what these merits consist of because I don't know".
'The decision to appeal was solely the family's, it was not a suggestion of the embassy nor of the foreign ministry, neither advocated nor suggested by any instutution.
"But if I knew what merits he was talking about, I would also be publicly willing to thank both the ambassador and Tajani".
Tajani, for his part, said he did not respond to "polemics".
Roberto Salis also said that an interior ministry suggestion that his daughter should ask to be put on the roll of overseas voters was "totally out of place" as it would scupper her chances of being moved to house arrest in Italy.
In a newspaper interview Thursday, Tajani, who is also deputy premier, said he was "proud of the work the government has done" to secure house arrest for the 39-year-old Monza elementary school teacher, who is running in the European elections for the Green-Left Alliance (AVS).Salis's conditions of detention have sparked protests from Italy after she was repeatedly led into court on a chain with her hands and ankles cuffed, a procedure Hungary says is standard but which aroused indignation in Italy.Roberto Salis had already said he had received no concrete assistance from the Italian justice or foreign ministries in securing his daughter's release from jail.Tajani and Justice Minister Carlo Nordio had said that, while they were willing to help in a case that saw Premier Giorgia Meloni appeal to her friend and ally, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the Hungarian judicial system was sovereign and independent.Hungary has been repeatedly rapped by the EU for rule of law issues. Salis, who had been put up for the European elections by the AVS in a bid to get the long-sought house arrest, saw her appeal upheld by a second-instance Hungarian court on Wednesday.Hungary's prison service said Tuesday Salis can vote in the June 8-9 European elections she is standing in for the AVS, rejecting her father Roberto's claims as "baseless".Salis is accused of attempted murder for allegedly being part of a German-led hammer gang that allegedly targeted three neo-Nazis on their Day of Honour commemorating an SS regiment's "heroic"resistance against the Red Army in February 2023.The Hungarian prosecutor has asked for a prison term of 11 years but Salis's father says she risks as long as 24 years in jail on charges of attempted murder.The alleged victims of her alleged attack did not reportedly complain to police.
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