The poor Italian woman led into the courtroom in shackles.
The nice and kind teacher behind bars.
The headlines in January/February were filled with messages like this, or with the pictures of the worried father, a known figure in the far-left world of Italy, expressing his worries over the poor treatment of his daughter.
A mural in Rome depicts her with her arms spread, her chains broken, and her dress decorated with the words, “Ila resisti” (app. Hold on, Ila).
Saint Ilaria, the martyr.
An online petition for Ms. Salis to be brought back to Italy has gathered more than 90,000 signatures.
Politicians (among them Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani) intervened, demanding her release.
Italy’s Greens and Left Alliance (Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra, AVS) has even decided to nominate her on its list in the European elections, with the hope that the MEP status would bring her immunity.
The story inevitably brought up some memories of Pontius Pilate, well, his Monty Phyton version, anyways. Wome is our friend, a respected member of the European Union, after all.
Alas, the descendants of one of the cradles of democracy are trying to release the wrong person from prison. (Again.)
This time it is not a petty pickpocket whose freedom is demanded by the crowd, even if that part of the story is rarely reported in full detail because it wouldn’t fit into the picture of the harmless schoolteacher.
The prison conditions in Hungary might or might not be up to some expectations (though it’s doubtful that she’d have much better place in Italy’s notoriously overcrowded and underfinanced prisons with poor sanitary conditions), but it is not a ground for dismissal (or martyrdom).
Coincidentally, she was acquitted in a similar case in Italy right after the day of the much-criticised Hungarian court appearance. She was on trial for being part of a group that attacked and damaged a gazebo used by the right-wing Northern League party in Monza in February 2017, then subsequently assaulted the two young women present. Ms. Salis was acquitted on the grounds that she wasn’t properly identified as one of the people who carried out the actual attack.
She never actually denied that she was in the mob during the events and just stood by, watching.
Then, in Hungary, Ilaria Salis is not facing prison for assaulting two neo-Nazi militants during the “Day of Honor” rally in Budapest (the usual report of the events in media).
Ilaria Salis is accused of participating in five attacks against nine people selected randomly, based on their clothing (all victims were wearing camo pants and jackets) and their “looks”.
The assaults didn’t happen in the heat of the moment when masses from two opposing protests collided.
But were carried out during the span of four days, in various parts of Budapest. The people who got attacked were not participating in any protest, demonstration or “remembrance event” at that time, they were simply passers-by, going home from a concert or on their way to work.
The assailants followed their victims for several minutes, waiting for the opportunity to charge. A video available on Youtube (from Welt Nachrichtensender) shows how one victim was attacked from behind by eight people, wielding a baton and using pepper spray.
Ilaria Salis was arrested, along with three other people, while trying to flee from the police by taxi. The innocent primary schoolteacher was found in the possession of a telescopic baton (she tried to hide it in the taxi). Her companions had other tools like different batons, brass knuckles and pepper sprays.
She is also charged with conspiracy to commit assault causing grievous bodily harm and with being affiliated with an extreme left-wing organization.
One of the co-defendants arrested together with Salis, German national Tobias E. has already admitted to belonging to the extreme-left group Hammerbande. He also admitted being the one to train the German assailants in close combat techniques and ways to avoid getting caught (like using burner phones). Indeed, based on the above video, the attacks in Budapest show great resemblance to the attacks carried out in Germany. The attackers travelled to Hungary “to hunt Neo-Nazis”, in accordance with the group’s goals.
Ilaria Salis was together with German nationals belonging to that organization, they were trying to flee together. Unless she was completely oblivious of the things happening around her, there might be reasonable belief that she was participant of the group (a thing that is to be decided in the courtroom, of course).
If Ilaria Salis will go to prison, it won’t be because she was punished for her political views (as she claimed), neither will there be “disproportionality of the punishment to what actually happened” (as her lawyer claimed), or it won’t be because “neo-Nazis vandalised the Jewish quarter in Budapest in 2019” (as Angelo Bonelli, the parliamentary representative of the AVS put it in his speech, whatever this means regarding the Salis case), but because she was found guilty of committing a serious criminal offence.
Following the logic of the lawyer, just because the attacks didn’t result in as serious harm as they could have (not because the attackers decided to go easy on their victims, but because others intervened), the defendants shouldn’t get the punished for the intent of causing harm to others.
With this logic, anybody attacking people on the streets should get away if they claim that the person they attacked “looked” like a criminal/neo-Nazi and they just exercised their right “for civil disobedience”. (The legal term for that act would be “lynching”, by the way.) Or if the victims suffered only some “minor” injuries, like broken skulls, despite being beaten with tools capable to inflict more harm.
Legitimate exercise of dissent should never result in episodes of violence, especially such as those carried out against defenceless.
Ilaria Salis is innocent until guilty, obviously.
But the outrage following her case makes it look as if the “far-right” would the Big, Bad Woolf in every story and the “far-left” would be immune to any wrongdoing (because, of course, they are fighting against the “far-right”).
To add another layer of surrealistic vibe to the case, she might actually make it to the European Parliament as a reward, “so that the issue of respect for rights in Europe becomes a fully political issue”, as the leaders of AVS put it.
Forget the minor detail that she might have committed a crime, something that should be decided in a courtroom, not via petitions or based on emotional parental outbursts. And especially not by hiding behind the shield of parliamentary immunity.
At least, she would find a few soulmates in the European Parliament, people with criminal pasts or being accused with serious crimes.
Hopefully, the image of the European Parliament won’t suffer too much damage if it turns into a safe harbour for people running from criminal procedures.
If the fact that you can make it there without any political program or practice is not enough in itself.
On the upside, if, for whatever reasons, Ilaria Salis wouldn’t make it to the European Parliament, she can always go back to teach the next generation of Antifa fighters in the primary schools of Monza.