Salis anything but a victim says Hungarian foreign minister

(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 29 - Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó on Thursday reiterated his "shock" at the Italian reaction to the case of Ilaria Salis, an antifascist militant and school teacher accused of attacking two Neo-Nazis a year ago whose detention conditions in Budapest prompted Rome to protest to the Hungarian government, claiming she is anything but a victim.
    "I am shocked by the Italian reactions," Szijjártó wrote on Facebook.
    "This lady (Salis, ed.) has been presented here in Italy as a kind of victim, a martyr. In Hungary people were almost killed," he added. "People were almost beaten to death in the streets, and then this lady is portrayed as a martyr or the victim of an unfair trial. No one, no far-left group, should see Hungary as a kind of boxing ring where they can come to plan to beat someone to death," concluded Szijjártó.
    On Wednesday the foreign minister said after meeting his Italian counterpart Antonio Tajani in Rome that he had been "surprised" by Italian alleged interference in the case after footage of Salis being led into a Budapest court on a chain with her hands and ankles cuffed caused an outcry in Italy.
    Salis' father has been trying to get her moved to Italy under house arrest but Tajani and Justice Minister Carlo Nordio said they could not interfere with the sovereign Hungarian justice system.
    Her lawyer therefore filed a plea to have her put under house arrest in Budapest.
    The 39-year-old Monza elementary school teacher is facing up to 24 years in jail for the alleged attack on the neo Nazis at their annual commemoration of an allegedly heroic Nazi regiment that fought off Russian troops.
    Szijjártó said Wednesday that Salis was a radical who had come to attack innocent people in the street and said he hoped she would get her "deserved punishment".
    He said she was "not a martyr". (ANSA).