Ilaria Salis: From Antifa Criminal to European Parliament Member

The international left has launched a disinformation campaign, portraying a violent offender as a martyr suffering in the horrid prisons of an oppressive regime.

Italian MEP Ilaria Salis attends the inaugural session of the EP following the June elections, in Strasbourg on 16 July, 2024 (Photo: MTI / EPA / Christophe Petit Tesson)

Ilaria Salis made headlines after being accused by law enforcement of organizing a brutal Antifa manhunt in Budapest. The series of attacks targeted individuals on the streets based solely on their attire, leaving several with serious injuries. In response, the international left-wing network launched a swift disinformation campaign, painting Ms. Salis as an innocent martyr unjustly accused and languishing in the horrid jails of an oppressive regime. This propaganda ultimately led to her election as an MEP on an Italian far-left list, allowing her to swap her prison cell for a parliamentary office. Following a request from Hungarian authorities to revoke her parliamentary immunity, the disinformation campaign against Hungary has intensified in an effort to block this move.

But who exactly is Ilaria Salis? Is she truly an innocent and unassuming leftist teacher, who was unfairly targeted? Her past suggests otherwise.

If we examine Ms. Salis’s remarkably brief parliamentary biography - comprising of just eight paragraphs - it presents a saintly image. It portrays her as someone "sensitive to the struggles of the underprivileged" who spent "several years working as a teacher in centers for troubled youth." The 39-year-old is also described as a lover of sports and theater. However, as a public figure, her less savory past, including criminal convictions, is fair game for scrutiny. The Italian conservative daily Il Giornale did not mince words, when it wrote that

"without fear of contradiction, we can claim that Ilaria Salis is a convicted criminal."

Ms. Salis secured her parliamentary position despite being unable to present a clean criminal record.

Ms. Salis has been convicted by Italian courts on four separate occasions over the years. Two cases, however, do not appear on her criminal record: a 2014 case and a 2015 ruling, the result of Ms. Salis igniting firecrackers and smoke bombs near the San Vittore prison building. In a lenient sentence she only received a fine, with the incident not appearing on her moral record. The other case from 2014 involved illegal squatting. Later, she was accused of resisting a public official in Milan during the eviction of anarchist activists. In 2019, the Milan Court of Appeals convicted her, finding that she unlawfully broke into a building - specifically a social housing unit in Corvetto - and subsequently replaced its lock. Given her 2014 conviction, Ms. Salis was already considered a repeat offender, which led to a more severe sentence: one year and twenty days of suspended imprisonment. On June 26, 2023, a third case was added to her record, increasing her suspended sentence to one year, three months, and ten days.

However, her criminal career did not stop at illegal squatting, but i's worth noting how she always attempted to frame her actions ideologically. She even faced criticism from within her own political circle, for instance from liberal MP Raffaella Paita, who stated that Ms. Salis and her movement "prioritize arrogance over legality." Since 2008, the far-left activist has accumulated a debt of around 90,000 euros (approximately 37 million forints) from her illegal squatting activities. Thus, the investigative portal Europe Unfiltered has asked: how many people in need could have been provided with social housing with this amount? Instead of assisting with the resolution of this critical issue, Ms. Salis’s militant activism has only hindered it.

Then in 2023, another final ruling was issued, this time by Italy's Supreme Court, in relation to a case in 2014 when she tried to prevent the eviction of anarchist squatters from a building. She was found guilty of not only resisting public officials, but also of throwing garbage bags and bins at them, and shouting obscene insults. This is called violence against authority. Fortunately for Ms. Salis, the Italian legal system is much more lenient than the Hungarian, and only her suspended prison sentences continued to increase by six months, to a total of 1 year 9 months and 10 days. If these sentence were not enough, she also has on her record 29 complaints for various minor offences.

As Europe Unfiltered has put it, this is

a portrait of more than a decade of militant activism and violence.

In this light, the image of an innocently persecuted left-wing teacher quickly disappears, and the true image of Ilaria Salis emerges, that of a violent far-left activist who, in the name of ideological struggle, does not hesitate to break the law and even assault officials, alone or in collaboration with others. The image of a victim, carefully constructed in the international media, began to crack in Italy. Matteo Salvini, Italy's former interior minister, now transport minister, and leader of the Lega, a member party of the Patriots group, for example, has openly said that 

"If she is found guilty, it is incompatible with her activities as a primary school teacher. Is it normal for an Italian primary school teacher to go around Europe and Italy beating up people and spitting on them?"

Ms. Salis's father, who played a central role in the smear campaign in the international media, immediately declared that he would sue the minister for defamation.

Violence against political opponents was hardly new to Ilaria Salis. Salvini also accused her of being involved in a violent attack on a stand of the Lega party in February 2017 - although she was never convicted for this. However, based on the information we have, it would come as no surprise if such an aggressive person did participate in an attack like that. Especially if we look at the charges she faces in connection with what she had committed in Budapest.

Fortunately for Ms. Salis, her fellow MEPs are hardly perturbed by her violent past. The Italian Antifa primary school teacher "hopes and expects" that the European Parliament "will stand in defense of fundamental rights, in defense of the presumption of innocence, the principle of proportionality and respect for the rule of law". Yes, that's what she told the press in the context of the procedure concerning the lifting of her immunity. 

While the evidence is clear, Ms. Salis is doing everything she can to portray herself as a victim of political persecution in response to Hungary's request received in October.

Since the practice in the EP's Committee on Legal Affairs is to revoke immunity in simple common law cases, the only chance she has is to create the impression that the charges and proceedings are politically motivated. The far-left colleagues in her faction have already stood up for her in support. We have seen a similar example: the EP refused to waive Hungarian MEP Anna Donath's immunity on precisely these grounds.

What would such a decision tell about the organization that makes it? Where the political aspect is more important than the fact that one of the MEPs was involved in a gang attack on people in the streets, let alone other murky issues in her history. Brussels is determined to maintain a total lack of consequences.

The author is an analyst at the Budapest-based Center for Fundamental Rights