Italian reporter Cecilia Sala (pictured) was arrested in Tehran on December 19. She is being held in solitary confinement at Tehran’s Evin Prison in Tehran and no reason has been given for her detention.
In a brief call to her family, Sala said she is fine but added, “Act Quickly”.
Sala, who works for Il Foglio newspaper and for podcast company Chora Media, left Rome for Iran on December 12 with a valid journalist visa. She carried out several interviews and produced three episodes of her “Stories” podcast. The last, “Patriarchy in Tehran”, was posted on Spotify two days before her arrest.
Tehran vibes pic.twitter.com/V4aLYlaHky
— Cecilia Sala (@ceciliasala) December 14, 2024
She had been due to fly back to Rome on December 20, but her phone went “silent” after she exchanged a few messages the day before, Chora said.
Sala’s partner, journalist Daniele Raineri, and Chora contacted the Italian Foreign Ministry with their concerns. On December 20, Sala’s phone was briefly turned on and she told her mother of her imprisonment. She was not allowed to give further details.
Italy’s Foreign Ministry, which reported the detention, said it is following Sala’s case with “utmost attention”.
The Italian Ambassador to Tehran, Paola Amadei, paid the journalist a visit on Friday to check on the conditions in which she was being held. She said Sala had been allowed to make two phone calls to her family.
The Ministry said Italy “has been working with Iranian authorities to clarify Cecilia Sala’s legal situation”.
Il Foglio said in a statement:
Journalism is not a crime.
Cecilia was in Iran, with a regular visa, to report on a country she knows and loves, a country in which information is suffocated by repression.
Iran is among the top eight countries in the world for imprisonment of journalists, alongside China, Myanmar, Belarus, Russia, Vietnam, Israel, and Eritrea.
For years, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have seized foreign and dual nationals, using them as leverage in political negotiations and prisoner exchanges.