The Italian government denounced on Friday the arrest in Iran, on December 19, of a journalist from the daily Il Foglio and the podcast site Chora Media. The journalist was placed in solitary confinement.
Cecilia Sala arrived in Iran on December 12 with a journalist visa. She should have returned to Italy on the 20th, but she was arrested the day before her return and has since been in an isolated cell in the high-security Evin prison in Tehran, according to her employer.
The Italian embassy and consulate in Tehran are closely following this case and the Italian ambassador to Iran visited her to check her conditions of detention, said the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, specifying that she was healthy.
The 29-year-old journalist was able to make two brief phone calls to her family in recent days, according to the same source.
“Talking about a country she knows and loves”
“Italy and Europe cannot tolerate this arbitrary arrest,” Chora Media wrote on Facebook, referring to a journalist who does her work “scrupulously, with attention, passion and professionalism.”
The young woman also works for the daily Il Foglio, close to the right. “Journalism is not a crime,” the daily’s boss wrote in an editorial on Friday. Cecilia Sala was in Iran “to tell the story of a country she knows and loves, a country where information is stifled by repression, threats, violence, detentions, often from journalists themselves” .
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Tensions between Rome and Tehran
The young journalist had published several reports on the changes that took place in this country after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
It is unclear whether this affair is linked to the current tensions between Rome and Tehran. Iran last week summoned an Italian diplomat and the Swiss ambassador, who represents U.S. interests in the country, over the arrest of two Iranian nationals, one of whom was arrested in Italy at the request of Washington.
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