in Hungarian detention there is the possibility of receiving letters, telegrams, money, food or clothing only from people who are directly registered and admitted to meetings. For this reason, during the first month of her detention, the Italian comrade did not even receive a package of necessities and had to make do with the clothes she was wearing (the same happened to the German comrade). Originally, she had been given permission to communicate with her parents and her Italian trusted lawyer, but this permission was revoked soon after the first phone calls. Since then, although she has a telephone in her cell, she is not allowed to communicate with anyone except her Hungarian lawyer and the liaison officer of the Italian embassy. An initial appeal against this decision was rejected, so it is very likely that she will continue to be held without the possibility of meetings and contacts with the outside world in the coming months, unless mediated by the local lawyer. Even those of us out here who have no direct contact with her will have to rely on indirectly transmitted information, with all the difficulties this entails for building solidarity.In any case, she seems to be doing well, and despite the difficulties during the first months of detention, the situation now seems to have improved. The first package has been delivered, and the detention conditions have become less difficult, as she is no longer isolated and shares her cell, which is no longer infested with bedbugs, with a detainee with whom she has a good relationship. These changes led to her decision not to publicly raise the case of her detention in the local media, as her lawyer had originally suggested.

In terms of media attention to the case, the Hungarian media initially picked up the news of the arrests with some fanfare, but over the weeks the attention has waned and the case currently seems to be following the usual procedures, however slow and arbitrary they may seem. The very slow delivery of the basic needs package and the poor sanitary conditions in the cells are not to be seen as the result of any personal persistence, but rather as the normal administration of Hungarian prisons. However, the investigation is still ongoing, and we have reports of an interrogation without lawyers in which both refused to testify.