Zoltán Kovács, the state secretary for communications and international relations, has said: “Let’s get some facts straight” about the case of Ilaria Salis, who is being detained in a Hungarian prison.
“Since mid-February, Ilaria Salis’ father, Roberto Salis, has been touring the European media saying that he is ‘concerned’ about his daughter’s safety as long as she is in Hungary. Therefore, they applied for house arrest in Italy, about which [foreign minister Peter] Szijjarto said that ‘it will be decided by the court, which is an independent body,'” Kovács wrote on X. He wrote there was “a reasonable suspicion that Ilaria Salis travelled to Hungary with her two antifa associates to beat up innocent people on the streets of Budapest. Meanwhile, the Italian media did its best to portray Salis as a martyr.” Citing a statement made earlier by Minister Szijjártó, Kovács wrote that it was “astonishing that they are trying to interfere with a Hungarian court case from Italy”, and he referred to “the premeditated nature of the act” which had been “well-thought-out”. “They nearly killed people in Hungary, and now she is depicted as a martyr.” He added that “no direct request from the Italian government (or any major media outlet) to the Hungarian government will make it easier to defend Salis’s case, because the government, as in any other modern democracy, has no control over the courts.”