An Italian journalist has been arrested while reporting in the Iranian capital, Tehran, and held in solitary confinement for a week, according to Italy’s foreign ministry.
Cecilia Sala, 29, a war correspondent and reporter who works for the newspaper Il Foglio and the podcast company Chora Media, was detained on 19 December, the ministry said, but her arrest was only made public on Friday.
She was in the country on a regular journalist visa and had published several reports on the shifting landscape in Iran after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.
“Following orders from foreign minister Antonio Tajani, the embassy and consulate in Tehran are monitoring the case with utmost attention from the outset,” Italy’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “Working in coordination with the council presidency, we are engaged with Iranian authorities to clarify Sala’s legal situation and verify the conditions of her detention.”
Sala is being held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, which mostly holds detainees facing security charges. It has long been criticised by western rights groups and was blacklisted by the US government in 2018 for “serious human rights abuses”.
The foreign ministry said Sala had been allowed to make two phone calls to her relatives. The Italian ambassador, Paola Amadei, visited Sala in prison on Friday, and Tajani said the journalist was “in good health condition”.
Chora Media said in a statement: “The independent voice of Cecilia has been silenced. Italy and Europe cannot tolerate this arbitrary arrest. Cecilia Sala must be immediately released.”
Il Foglio said in article: “Journalism is not a crime. We decided to share Cecilia’s story after receiving assurances from the heads of our diplomacy that informing our readers about her arrest would not slow down the diplomatic efforts to bring her home.”
Sala has nearly half a million followers on Instagram and is a regular guest on Italian talkshows. She has covered among other topics the fall of Kabul and the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the crisis in Venezuela, the war in Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Elly Schlein, the leader of the centre-left opposition Democratic party, urged the government to act swiftly. “We immediately call on the government to take every useful initiative to shed light on this matter, to clarify the reasons for this detention and, above all, to bring Cecilia Sala back to Italy as soon as possible,” she said.
Iran has not acknowledged detaining Sala. However, it can take weeks before authorities announce such arrests. Since the 1979 US embassy crisis, when dozens of hostages were released after 444 days in captivity, Iran has used prisoners with western ties as bargaining chips in negotiations with other countries.
