In May 2023, a few weeks after announcing her candidacy for the 2024 European election, Salis was moved from a jail cell (which she told her lawyer was crawling with rats and bugs) to house arrest in Budapest. The following month, she was elected to the European Parliament, which meant she was released and allowed to return to Italy.
But the reprieve proved temporary. Days after Orbán visited the European Parliament in October 2024, Hungarian prosecutors requested lifting her immunity, a move Salis described as having “rather peculiar timing.”
“The request reached the Parliament exactly the day after Orbán’s visit, when I, along with other colleagues, had spoken out against the Hungarian government,” she said.
“It’s clear that the justice system is being used for political purposes, both as propaganda, especially with Hungary’s elections approaching, and as a form of political revenge,” she said. “It’s impossible to hold a fair trial in Hungary for a political opponent; it would be like extraditing someone to a country such as Iran.”
Salis said she has received a large number of anonymous threats, including some sent to her parents’ home in Italy, as well as public threats from political figures in both Hungary and Italy.
In response to one of her social media posts on Thursday, Orbán’s spokesperson Zoltán Kovács shared the coordinates of Marianosztra prison in northern Hungary.
Salis said this was not the first time Kovács had publicly tried to intimidate her, noting that members of Italy’s far-right League, which is allied with Orbán’s Fidesz party in the European Parliament, have employed similar tactics. “There is a real hate campaign against me, they are actively fueling a climate of hatred,” she said.
“This is not a trial aimed at delivering justice, but an act of retaliation, a way to create a scapegoat and an enemy, so that Orbán’s government can use it for domestic propaganda. These are sham proceedings. A show trial that, in many ways, has already been staged.”