Italian journalist Cecilia Sala arrested in Tehran, Italy says

(CNN) — Italian journalist Cecilia Sala has been detained in Tehran, Italy’s foreign ministry said in a statement Friday.

Sala was reporting in the Iranian capital when she was “stopped by Tehran police” on December 19, the statement said, adding that the foreign ministry “has worked with the Iranian authorities to clarify the legal situation of Cecilia Sala and to verify the conditions of her detention.”

The reporter was visited Friday by Italian Ambassador Paola Amadei in prison “to verify the conditions and state of her detention,” the statement said, adding that she had previously been allowed to make two phone calls to her relatives.

Sala is a reporter for the Italian daily Il Foglio, which says the journalist is being held in Tehran’s Evin prison. According to Il Foglio, Cecilia was in Iran “on a regular visa to report on a country she knows and loves,” while noting its repression of free speech and threats against journalists.

The publication’s editor, Claudio Cerasa, wrote in the paper on Friday: “Journalism is not a crime. Let’s bring Cecilia Sala home.”

“She is in Evin prison. So Tehran has chosen to challenge everything the West considers transversally untouchable: our freedom,” Cerasa wrote, adding that the news outlet decided to report Sala’s story “after getting assurances, from our diplomatic chiefs, that making readers aware of the news of her arrest would not slow down diplomatic efforts to bring her home.”

The Italian outlet Chora Media, where Sala also works, said that she had left Rome on December 12 “with a valid journalistic visa and the protections of a journalist on assignment.

“She conducted several interviews and produced three episodes of the Stories podcast for Chora News,” said the media outlet, adding that it is making Sala’s detention public only now as her parents and Italian authorities had asked it to remain silent, hoping for the journalist’s swift release.

Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said Friday on X that “the entire government” is working to free Sala, but that “negotiations with Iran are not resolved, unfortunately, by the involvement of Western public opinion and the force of popular outrage but only by high-level political and diplomatic action.”

Sala’s Instagram account shows recent posts on women she met in Iran.

CNN has reached out to Iran’s foreign ministry for comment.

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