In Could 2023, just a few weeks after saying her candidacy for the 2024 European election, Salis was moved from a jail cell (which she advised her lawyer was crawling with rats and bugs) to deal with arrest in Budapest. The next month, she was elected to the European Parliament, which meant she was launched and allowed to return to Italy.
However the reprieve proved non permanent. Days after Orbán visited the European Parliament in October 2024, Hungarian prosecutors requested lifting her immunity, a transfer Salis described as having “relatively peculiar timing.”
“The request reached the Parliament precisely the day after Orbán’s go to, once I, together with different colleagues, had spoken out in opposition to the Hungarian authorities,” she stated.
“It’s clear that the justice system is getting used for political functions, each as propaganda, particularly with Hungary’s elections approaching, and as a type of political revenge,” she stated. “It’s not possible to carry a good trial in Hungary for a political opponent; it could be like extraditing somebody to a rustic reminiscent of Iran.”
Salis stated she has acquired numerous nameless threats, together with some despatched to her dad and mom’ residence in Italy, in addition to public threats from political figures in each Hungary and Italy.
In response to one among her social media posts on Thursday, Orbán’s spokesperson Zoltán Kovács shared the coordinates of Marianosztra jail in northern Hungary.
Salis stated this was not the primary time Kovács had publicly tried to intimidate her, noting that members of Italy’s far-right League, which is allied with Orbán’s Fidesz celebration within the European Parliament, have employed comparable ways. “There’s a actual hate marketing campaign in opposition to me, they’re actively fueling a local weather of hatred,” she stated.
“This isn’t a trial geared toward delivering justice, however an act of retaliation, a method to create a scapegoat and an enemy, in order that Orbán’s authorities can use it for home propaganda. These are sham proceedings. A present trial that, in some ways, has already been staged.”
