(Adnkronos) – Tech billionaire Elon Musk “had nothing to do” with the release in Iran last week of jailed journalist Cecilia Sala, which owed entirely to Italy’s government, foreign minister Antonio Tajani stated on Friday.
“Musk had nothing to do with the Cecilia Sala affair and the case was solved by the Italian government, there is no doubt about it,” Tajani told Sky Tg24.
“There was no other intervention by others and it is not true that there was a protest from the US side,” Tajani said.
Tajani admitted he had spoken about Sala to his US counterpart Antony Blinken, “who never expressed any contrary positions to mine or protested what Italy was doing,” he said.
”The government freed Cecilia just as it freed many other Italians who were in captivity,” he said.
On Thursday, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman denied a New York Times report that Musk helped secure Sala’s release and return to Italy on 8 January after her detention in Tehran on 19 December for breaching Islamic law three days after she arrived in Iran.
Iran’s state-run Isna news agency cited Esmail Baghaei as calling the NYT report “a media fabrication and a fantasy”.
Last weekend Italy freed from custody Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi, an Iranian engineer arrested on 16 December at Milan’s Malpensa airport on a US warrant.
Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, has emerged as a key player during Trump’s transition to a second presidential term during which he will jointly head a new government efficiency department.
Musk spent at least 260 million dollars in efforts to re-elect Trump according to filings to the Federal Election Commission.
