We ask for Salis's rights to be respected says Meloni

(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 1 - Premier Giorgia Meloni said Thursday that Italy was asking for Ilaria Salis's rights to be respected after footage of her being led by a chain into a courtroom in Budapest with her hands and ankles cuffed caused an outcry in Italy over the treatment of the 39-year-old Monza elementary school teacher and antifascist activist who faces up to 24 years in jail for an alleged attack on two Hungarian neoNazis last February.
    "We are asking to verify respect for Ilaria Salis's rights," said Meloni after Thursday's EU summit and her meeting with her friend and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on the case.
    Meloni said being shackled "is a treatment practised in various Western States, (but) we don't do it.
    "It happens in various States, even Western ones," she reiterated, "but it's not our custom, they are certainly images that have an impact, but it works like that in certain other sovereign States".
    "Since the beginning the government has provided all the assistance possible," to Salis and her family, the premier added.
    Meloni said she hoped for a "speedy trial for Salis and that she is proven innocent".
    She said she had asked Orban for "respect for Salis and a fair trial".
    Italy is expected to ask for the militant to be transferred to Italy after a conviction, and to be placed under house arrest if, as Rome desires, she is placed under home detention in Hungary. (ANSA).