(Adnkronos) – Italian journalist Cecilia Sala, arrested in Tehran on December 19, has been held “in solitary confinement” in Evin prison, “where dissidents are held,” for a week. This was reported by Chora Media, the Italian podcast company for which the journalist produces ‘Stories’, stressing that “the reason for her arrest has not yet been formalized.”
Cecilia Sala, who also works for Il Foglio, left Rome for Iran on December 12 with “a regular journalistic visa and the protections of a journalist on assignment,” Chora Media specifies, adding that Sala had done a series of interviews and produced three episodes of the ‘Stories’ podcast. Her return to Rome was scheduled for December 20, but on the morning of the 19th, after an exchange of messages, her phone went dead.
Chora Media points out that, knowing Cecilia Sala’s extreme punctuality in sending in recordings, the alarm was immediately raised and “together with her partner, Post journalist Daniele Ranieri, we alerted the Farnesina Crisis Unit.” Her Iranian contacts were also called, but no one knew where she had gone.
On Friday morning she did not board her return flight and a few hours later Cecilia Sala called her mother and told her that she had been arrested, taken to prison and that she had been allowed to make a short phone call, the Italian podcast company continues, according to which since that moment “the activity of the Italian authorities, in whom we place all our trust and with whom we are in constant contact to understand what happened and to bring her home, has begun.”
