An Albanian Antifa-militant who beat up innocent people on the streets of Budapest could be extradited to Hungary, potentially paving the way for his accomplice, Italian MEP Ilaria Salis, to be stripped of her parliamentary immunity and be extradited as well.
According to Italian media reports, 32-year-old Rexhino “Gino” Abazaj, an Albanian man who has lived in Italy since childhood, was arrested last week by French police under an international arrest warrant issued by Hungary.
Abazaj was a participant in a group of Antifa militants who beat up innocent passers-by on the streets of Hungary’s capital Budapest last February. The attackers targeted people who they believed had taken part in a Neo-Nazi march and bludgeoned them with telescopic batons and hammers. Some of the victims sustained serious, life-threatening injuries.
Hungarian authorities want Abazaj extradited so that he can be held accountable for his actions in a Hungarian court. He claims to be innocent, and until a decision is made about whether to extradite him—which could take months—he will remain in a Paris prison.
One of his accomplices, 40-year-old Italian citizen Ilaria Salis, was caught by Hungarian police following the brutal attacks in Budapest. She was charged with three counts of attempted assault and accused of being part of an extreme left-wing organisation. Her case was widely reported in European media, especially in Italy, with left-wing journalists focusing on her alleged “inhumane” treatment in prison—and not on the shocking crimes she committed.
In May this year, she was released from prison and transferred to house arrest in Budapest. She was nominated to be a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) by the Italian Greens and Left Alliance in order to gain legal immunity, and after being elected MEP, she was released.
Since her release, she has continuously attacked the conservative Hungarian government and, during the debate in the European Parliament on the Hungarian EU presidency’s programme earlier in October, had the audacity to depict Hungary as a “modern tyranny.”
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán called it “absurd that we have to listen to a speech about the rule of law by someone who beat innocent people on the streets of Budapest with batons.”
Following the arrest of her Albanian accomplice, whom she calls a “friend and comrade,” Ilaria Salis tweeted that the Hungarian request for extradition shows that “the tyrant Orbán is once again trying to trample on the values of anti-fascism and the rule of law.”
Rexhino Abazaj’s case could significantly affect Salis’ fate, because if France decides that the Albanian should be tried for a crime committed in Budapest, then the European Parliament would have to take that into account when assessing whether to strip Salis of her legal immunity—something Hungary has requested.
The charges in the international arrest warrant against Abazaj are exactly the same as the charges brought against Ilaria Salis, writes Italian daily Il Giornale, which adds that the two Antifa activists’ lives had intertwined many times in the past.
Reacting to Salis’ tweet, Hungarian government spokesman Zoltán Kovács replied
What your “story clearly shows” Ilaria Salis, is that if you go to any country and you commit aggravated assault like a common thug, you will be prosecuted accordingly.
