“This time it seems to me that we have gone too far,” Tajani told Radio Anch’io.

The harsh treatment is a “violation of EU norms” and is “not in line with our legal culture,” he added.

Tajani said Salis’ lawyers “must ask for house arrest in Italy” and added that Justice Minister Carlo Nordio has met with her father Roberto and is following the case closely.

On Monday, Nordio said during the programme XXI Secolo on Rai uno that Italy is doing “everything it can to mitigate the harsh conditions in which she is being held”.

Monza-born Salis, who has pleaded innocent to the charges, faces up to 11 years in jail in the trial, which has been adjourned to May 24.

A German co-defendant, who plead guilty, got three years in jail Monday.

Meanwhile, the centrist opposition Italia Viva (IV) party has urged Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to appeal to her friend and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Salis’s case.

A Brescia-born activist, 43-year-old Carmen Giorgio, who was Salis’s cellmate for three months, told La Repubblica daily Sunday that “she’s scared of staying there forever, we’ve seen all kinds of things in there, rats, pigeons, lice, chains, maltreatment and beatings”.

ANSA