Police check on Ilaria Salis before the 'No Kings' demonstration: details and controversy

"Around 7.30am," he added, "I was woken up by the police in the room where I was. They knocked on the door, said my name, said it was the police and asked me to open it. I opened the door, they asked me for a document which I gave them, I also pointed out that I was an MEP. They did not explain the reason for the visit, they simply said that it was about investigations'.

On what happened, Salis intends to initiate parliamentary action in Brussels and, through his party, in Italia with a question to the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi. It is not excluded that the question could also be addressed to the Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajani.

The European alert that led to the check was triggered at 4 a.m. on 28 March, and the policemen who arrived at the hotel for identification did not know that Salis was an MEP. If a request for a parliamentary question is received, it cannot be excluded that a report to the department may be requested to explain point by point what happened.

The reason for the Schengen alert is the closeness of Italian politics to German antagonist and anti-fascist groups that were also allegedly responsible for attacks on extreme right-wing exponents: in this specific case it would be the extreme left-wing organisation 'Hammerbande', which was involved in some proceedings in Germany and Hungary following aggression and riots in the streets. This would be the same group associated with Salis by Hungarian magistrates, who had accused her three years ago.

Berlin meanwhile continues to withhold information about the police control. 'As is often the case, we cannot give information on individual cases, we ask for understanding,' a spokeswoman for the German Ministry of the Interior told a press conference. Asked how a confirmation could be obtained at least that German authorities were behind it, the spokeswoman replied: 'This can be asked of the person affected by the measure'. The latter, she explained, 'is allowed to answer. We are not.

Initially, Salis had assumed that the check was part of the preventive detention hypothesis of the security decree, according to which police officers during specific services can take suspicious persons to their offices during demonstrations and detain them for up to twelve hours.

This was 'categorically' ruled out by the Police Headquarters, which stated that 'the personnel intervening only asked for the documents' from Salis 'and the person in his company' and when they 'realised that it was the MEP, all checks were stopped without entering the hotel room.

It was precisely the presence of another person in the hotel room that fuelled further controversy. For Salis, Germany had requested a personal check, of the vehicle used and of his companions, including his companion and assistant Ivan Bonnin. An activist and co-author with the MEP of the book 'Vipera', he was convicted in 2015 for clashes at the University of Bologna of the crime of aggravated disruption of a public service and private violence.

Circumstance ended up in the crosshairs of the majority: Giovanni Donzelli, deputy and head of organisation of Fratelli d'Italia, announces a parliamentary question 'to know all the background of this escort of Ilaria Salis paid with public money'.

Nicola Fratoianni, leader of Alleanza Verdi Sinistra, returned to 24 Mattino on Radio 24: 'If the police headquarters, as the police commissioner told us on Saturday, had to carry out this check as a matter of official duty - even though there was evidently some short-circuiting anyway - the agents who intervened did not understand that that name was known in Italia for reasons related to the debate and the visibility of Ilaria Salis: it was a bit hard to imagine. I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist and I believe the version given by the Quaestor of Rome. I have no desire to shift the blame onto the two officers who were doing their job, attributing responsibility to them that they probably do not have. Probably something did not work in the information system, but that is secondary, because it only concerns the episode itself. The real point is that this affair once again affects Ilaria Salis and has to do with a third country, in this case Germany, as has been ascertained, and I believe that our political authorities should pose the problem and put it forcefully'. This was said by