Salis set to run for EP for AVS

(ANSA) - ROME, APR 19 - Ilaria Salis, a 39-year-old Monza elementary teacher and anti-fascist held in contentious conditions in Hungary and on trial for allegedly attacking two neo-Nazis last year, is set to run for the Green-Left Alliance (AVS) in June's European elections, in a bid to help her obtain the house arrest she has been refused, leaders Angelo Bonelli and Nicola Fratoianni said Thursday night.
    Salis, whose detention conditions have raised an outcry in Italy, was allegedly part of a German 'hammer gang' that targeted neoNazis on their annual day of honour in February last year remembering a 'heroic' Nazi SS regiment that resisted the Soviet advance in WWII.
    The Hungarian prosecutor has asked for a prison term of 11 years but Salis's father says she risks as long as 24 years in jail on charges of attempted murder.
    The alleged victims of her alleged attack did not reportedly complain to police.
    Rome has repeatedly protested after Salis was led into court on several occasions on a chain with her hands and ankles cuffed, which Budapest says is standard procedure for its prisoners.
    She is also allegedly being held in a jail with bedbugs, rats and routine mistreatment, her supporters say, a claim Budapest denies.
    Her father says she was tortured in order to get her to confess to her alleged crime.
    Bonelli and Fratoianni said the candidacy had been agreed with the father Roberto.
    "The Green-Left Alliance in agreement with Roberto Salis has decided to candidate her daughter Ilaria, detained in Hungary, in conditions that gravely violate human rights, in their lists for the upcoming European elections," they said.
    Roberto Salis said: "It's not an attempt to escape the trial but a way of safeguarding my daughter's rights". (ANSA).