Italian newspaper urges Iran to free journalist held in notorious jail

The Italian newspaper Il Foglio is calling on authorities to help bring home one of its journalists who was detained in Iran just before Christmas.

Italian journalist Cecilia Sala was arrested in Tehran just one day after an Iranian citizen was arrested in Italy for drone trafficking. The 38-year-old man is now being processed for extradition to the US.

Sala was detained while on a reporting trip in the Iranian capital, during which she held an interview with a former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

She also recently published a podcast episode with Zeinab Musavi, an Iranian comedian who has criticised the mandatory hijab in her content, according to media reports.

In a statement released on Friday, Italian media reported that Sala was taken to Tehran’s Evin Prison, notorious for holding dissidents, and has been in solitary confinement for over a week.

“Sala was arrested in Tehran on Thursday… and has been in jail since, in solitary confinement. The reason for her unjustifiable arrest has yet to be formally stated,” the statement read.

“We are only sharing this distressing news now because Italian authorities and Cecilia’s parents requested we remain silent, hoping this would facilitate a swift release, which unfortunately has not happened yet.”

Sala had departed Rome on 12 December with a valid journalistic visa and official guarantees for foreign correspondents.

The following day she posted on X a series of photos of women in Tehran.

She was scheduled to return to Rome last Friday but stopped responding to messages on the morning of 19 December.

She is now being held in the city’s Evin prison where she is doing ‘well’, according to Italy’s ambassador to Iran who visited her in prison.

Sala has reportedly been allowed two phone calls with her relatives since her detention.

“We don’t know anything about the timings and it’s impossible to make predictions. What is important is to be prudent, cautious, intelligent and to tell what we know, what happened, without letting our guard down, preventing the story from ending up in oblivion soon. Because the life of a person is at stake who, for inexplicable and mischievous reasons, is in one of the most dramatic and dangerous prisons in the world,” said Claudio Cerasa, Editor-in-chief of Italy’s daily newspaper Il Foglio.

“Cecilia had a regular visa in Iran. It wasn’t undercover. Cecilia is not an adventurer. She’s a competent, good, prepared and prudent journalist.”

Italy’s foreign ministry has said it’s working with the Iranian authorities to ‘clarify Sala’s legal situation and the conditions of her detention’.

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The European Union has also said it is following the situation closely.

Iran has not yet acknowledged detaining Sala but it can take weeks before authorities announce such arrests.