The Green leader Angelo Bonselli on Thursday denied a newspaper report that Ilaria Salis is set to run for the Green-Left Alliance (AVS) in June's European elections. Il Foglio had said the 39-year-old Monza elementary teacher and anti-fascist will reportedly be the AVS's North-West Italy chief candidate.
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 honor in February last year remembering a 'heroic' Nazi SS regiment that resisted the Soviet advance in WWII. Her father says she was tortured in order to get her to confess her alleged crime. She is also allegedly being held in a jail with bedbugs, rats, and routine mistreatment, her supporters say, a claim Budapest denies. 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.