A 29-year-old Italian journalist was arrested while she was reporting in the Iranian capital of Tehran and was held in solitary confinement for a week. According to the Italian foreign ministry, the war correspondent named Cecilia Sala was detained on December 19, but her arrest was only made public on Friday.
Sala works for the Italian newspaper Il Foglio and the podcast company Chora Media. As per the ministry, the young reporter was in Iran on a regular Journalist visa and had published several reports on the shifting landscape in Iran following the fall of deposed President Bashar al-Assad’s 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,” the ministry furthered.
The journalist being held in the notorious Iranian jail
Following the confirmation from the Italian foreign ministry, several media outlets reported that Sala is being held in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, which mostly holds detainees facing security charges. The prison complex 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 mentioned that Sala was allowed to make two phone calls to her relatives. Meanwhile, the Italian ambassador, Paola Amadei, visited Sala in prison on Friday, and Tajani told the local reporters that the journalist was “in good health condition”. Meanwhile, Chora Media, where Sala used to work also shared a statement of condemnation following the arbitrary arrest.
“The independent voice of Cecilia has been silenced. Italy and Europe cannot tolerate this arbitrary arrest. Cecilia Sala must be immediately released,” the Italian podcast firm said in a statement. In a separate article 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.”
It is pertinent to note that Sala was quite popular in Italy with nearly half a million followers on Instagram and has been a regular guest in several Italian talk shows. Elly Schlein, the leader of the centre-left opposition Democratic party urged Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government to take “swift action” in this regard.
“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. Iranian officials on the other hand are yet to acknowledge the detention of Sala. In the past, Tehran has used prisoners with Western ties as bargaining chips in negotiations with other countries.
Source » pakistantoday