Budapest must consider alternatives to prison for Salis - FM

(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 30 - Italian foreign ministry secretary general Ambassador Riccardo Guariglia summoned the Chargé d'Affaires of the Republic of Hungary on Tuesday on the instructions of Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani to protest at the conditions in which Ilaris Salis is being detained.
    "In reiterating the Italian government's protest at the conditions" of detention, Guariglia "expressed the government's firm expectation" that Salis be granted "a pre-trial detention regime that is in line with European law as soon as possible, including alternative measures to prison custody.
    On Monday the 39-year-old Milan primary school teacher and antifascist militant Salis was dragged in chains into a Budapest court where she is on trial for attacking two Hungarian neoNazis a year ago, causing outrage in Italy.
    She smiled shyly at the public benches as she was pulled in wearing handcuffs and with her feet shackled by leather stocks with locks on.
    "It was shocking, she was dragged like a dog," one of Salis's lawyers, Eugenio Losco, told ANSA.
    "It was crazy, and the Italian State must end this situation now," he added.
    A German co-defendant of Salis's, who unlike her pleaded guilty, got three years in jail.
    The trial has been adjourned until May 24.
    Photo: Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani (centre) and foreign ministry secretary general Ambassador Riccardo Guariglia (right). (ANSA).