The European Parliament is quick to remove the diplomatic immunity of its conservative members who are persecuted at home even for a tweet, but left-wing MEPs seem to escape the same treatment even if charged with much more serious offenses, such as assault bordering on attempted murder.
After all this time, the fate of Italy’s Green MEP Ilaria Salis—known as the ‘Hammer Girl,’ and charged with three counts of attempted assault in Hungary—remains undecided. On Wednesday, April 9th, the EU Parliament’s Legal Affairs (JURI) committee once again delayed the debate on whether to revoke her immunity and allow authorities to continue her prosecution.
On the same day, a French court ruled against extraditing one of Salis’ accomplices, Rexino Arzaj, or ‘Comrade Gino’ to his friends, who was arrested while hiding in France. The court justified the decision by claiming that his right to a fair trial wouldn’t be guaranteed in Hungary.
This is the second time the European Parliament is dragging its feet in the Salis case, as the debate was initially supposed to take place in January, followed by a vote in the committee and a final decision in the plenary chamber. It’s almost like the mainstream parties know that what Salis did is inexcusable, and that’s why they’d rather keep the whole issue off the agenda.
Salis, a primary school teacher turned Antifa, traveled to Hungary along with a group of militant antifascists mainly from the German Hammerbande (‘Hammer Gang’) in 2023.
The group was trying to provoke and fight attendees of an annual far-right rally in Budapest, but as the official event was banned that year, they instead went around and attacked nine random targets—who they decided “looked like” neo-Nazis based on their clothing—with batons and hammers, wounding many quite seriously.
CCTV footage of the brutal attacks and gory images of the aftermath are out in the public for all to see, yet Salis and the EU Left are insisting on her innocence and argue that she’s the victim of political persecution by Hungary’s conservative government.
Salis was released from her detention in Hungary after she was elected an MEP in 2024. Not because she has been pursuing a political career or has any experience, but solely because the Italian Greens portrayed her as a martyr and put her on the top of their EU election list as a campaign strategy. The crimes in question can be punished by up to 24 years in prison in Hungary, but prosecutors requested an 11-year sentence for Salis as well as several of her accomplices. Seven attackers gave themselves up in Germany in the hope of striking a deal to avoid extradition to Hungary, similarly to Arzaj.
Since becoming a lawmaker, Salis has focused solely on advocacy against Hungary’s ‘fascist’ government while living on her comfortable Brussels salary of around €10,000, paid by EU taxpayers.
