Cecilia Sala, 29, was detained in Tehran on December 19 while acting as a war correspondent for the newspaper Il Foglio and the podcast company Chora Media, per The Guardian. Her arrest was made public on Friday. She is being held at Evin, a prison in Tehran which houses mostly people facing security charges and was blacklisted by the US government for "serious human rights abuses" in 2018.
“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.”
Both of Sala's employers back in Italy released statements.
Chora Media said: “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: “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 an impressive background, covering international topics such as the fall of Kabul and the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the wars in the middle east and Ukraine. She has almost 500k followers on Instagram and is a regular on Italian news shows.
Elly Schlein, Italy's Democratic party leader, stated, “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."
