Suspected Antifa Terrorist Released From Prison After EU Election Conferred Parliamentary Immunity

Alleged member of a hard-left hit squad who are accused of attacking political opponents with hammers was released from detention on Friday after winning a seat to the European Parliament and so getting immunity from prosecution.

Italian Antifa “activist” Ilaria Sallis was released from detention in Hungary on Friday, having been in prison and under house arrest for 15 months over her alleged role in serious assaults against neo-Nazi activists in 2023, amounting to alleged attempted murder. Under European Union law, members of the European Parliament enjoy extremely strong protections from prosecution and despite her ongoing incarceration she had been nominated as a candidate by Italy’s Green-Left alliance for this month’s Europe-wide elections.

The party gained enough votes for Sallis, a teacher, to become a Member of the European Parliament last week with 6.8 per cent of the national ballots in Italy. She will shortly return to Italy to start work as a parliamentarian.

Hungary says it has complied with the law in all respects including releasing Sallis when asked to by the European Parliament, but has expressed concern about what it believes to be a potentially violent criminal to sit in Parliament and has said it will be asking Brussels to consider suspending her immunity due to the strength of the evidence it claims it has. Budapest has previously said it has video evidence of the 2023 attack which implicates Sallis and that it will share this with European lawmakers.

Sallis was arrested in 2023 after five people, allegedly neo-nazis, were assaulted over the course of three days in Budapest, the victims in some cases suffering serious and life-threatening injuries after being attacked from behind by people with hammers. Sallis was charged by the chief prosecutor with “attempted bodily harm endangering life” and member of an illegal organisation and faces as many as 24 years in prison, but as the trial was ongoing she has not yet been judged guilty or innocent of the matter.