'I am close to you' Mattarella tells Salis's dad

(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 30 - Roberto Salis, the father of 39-year-old Ilaria Salis, an Italian antifascist on trial in Hungary for allegedly attacking two neo Nazis in Budapest last year, said Saturday he had received a telephone call from President Sergio Mattarella to express his closeness and interest in the case.
    "He reiterated his personal closeness to me and the family and assured me his personal interest in the case," Salis told ANSA after writing to Mattarella on Friday to "get the government moving" on his daughter's allegedly inhumane detention after she was denied house arrest by Budapest authorities on Thursday.
    "I thank (the president) for the promptness with which he answered me in less than 24 hours, and above all for his sensitivity and closeness to the drama I am experiencing with my family," continued Salis.
    On Friday Salis told ANSA he had sent an electronic registered letter to the President of the Republic, "a very dry letter referring to the one I sent him on 17 January and to which he immediately replied". "He is the guarantor of the Constitution and Article 3 (against discrimination, ed.) applies to all Italian citizens: he can intervene with the Orban government and he has to move the Italian government because it evidently did not do what it was supposed to do," he added.
    Salis had been hoping that his daughter could get house arrest in Hungary so she could then be moved to house arrest in Italy.
    Ilaria Salis, a 39-year-old Monza elementary school teacher who was allegedly part of a German hammer gang targeting neoNazis celebrating a WWII regiment that fought off the Soviet army, has repeatedly been led into a Budapest court on a chain with her hands and ankles cuffed, sparking outrage in Italy.
    Her lawyers have said they may appeal against the ruling against granting house arrest in Hungary or may go the European Court of Human Rights.
    Salis has urged Premier Giorgia Meloni to use her influence with her friend and ally Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to help his daughter. (ANSA).