League putting further chains on Salis - Schlein

(ANSA) - ROME, JAN 31 - Rather than defending the dignity of an Italian citizen the League party of Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini is putting further chains on Ilaria Salis by dragging up her past, centre-left opposition Democratic Party (PD) secretary Elly Schlein said on Wednesday.
    "Instead of fighting not to see the dignity of an Italian citizen trampled underfoot, the League is rummaging through her past; even before a sentence has been passed it has already decided that she is guilty, and it is putting more chains around the wrists and ankles of Ilaria Salis, recalling charges on which she has already been acquitted," said Schlein.
    "In this nostalgia for the Middle Ages in which the presumption of innocence has disappeared Salvini makes statements of an unbearable paternalism," she added.
    "But if he claims that someone accused of personal injury cannot be a primary school teacher, we have to ask him how someone accused of kidnapping can be a minister," concluded Schlein.
    Salvini is on trial in Palermo for allegedly kidnapping and refusing to perform his duty for 147 migrants rescued by Spanish NGO Open Arms in August 2019 when he was interior minister by denying them authorisation to disembark.
    It was one of several such incidents during his tenure.
    Earlier the League said in a statement that Salis, the 39-year-old elementary school teacher and anti-Fascist activist on trial in Hungary for allegedly attacking two Hungarian neo-Nazis almost a year ago, had been tried for being part of a group that attacked a party gazebo and assaulted two young women present in February 2017.
    Her lawyers subsequently said that Salis been acquitted of the charges against her.
    On Tuesday her father Roberto denounced a growing campaign to discredit his daughter's actions. (ANSA).