Green leader denies Salis set to run for AVS

(ANSA) - ROME, APR 18 - Green leader Angelo Bonselli on Thursday denied a newspaper report that Ilaria Salis is set to run for the Green-Left Alliance (AVS) in June's European elections, after liberal daily Il Foglio reported the alleged news earlier Thursday.
    Il Foglio had said the 39-year-old Monza elementary teacher and anti-fascist held in contentious conditions in Hungary and on trial for allegedly attacking two neo-Nazis last year will reportedly be the AVS's North-West Italy chief candidate.
    "I deny it," said Bonelli, one of AVS's co-leaders.
    Salis, whose detention conditions have raised an outcry in Italy, was allegedly part of a German 'hammer gang' that targeted neoNazis on their annual day of honour in February last year remembering a 'heroic' Nazi SS regiment that resisted the Soviet advance in WWII.
    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.
    Rome has repeatedly protested after Salis was led into court on several occasions on a chain with her hands and ankles cuffed, which Budapest says is standard procedure for its prisoners.
    She is also allegedly being held in a jail with bedbugs, rats and routine mistreatment, her supporters say, a claim Budapest denies.
    Her father says she was tortured in order to get her to confess to her alleged crime. (ANSA).