ROME: Efforts to release Italian journalist Cecilia Sala from prison in Iran are “complicated”, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Saturday.

Sala was detained on Dec 19 by police in Tehran and is being held in the city’s notorious Evin prison, according to her employer. “We are trying to resolve a complicated issue and to ensure in the meantime that Cecilia Sala is detained in the best possible conditions,” Tajani said.

Asked when she might be released, he said “I hope shortly, but it does not depend on us”. “She is obviously detained, which is not ideal, but she is fed and in a single cell,” he said.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office said she was “following the complex affair” closely, and Rome was pursuing “all possible avenues of dialogue” to bring Sala home “as soon as possible”.

Chora Media, an Italian podcast publisher for which Sala worked, said she had travelled from Rome to Iran on Dec 12 on a journalist visa, and was due to return on Dec 20. But she went quiet on Dec 19 and then did not board her flight. Shortly afterwards she called her mother to say she had been arrested, it said.

“She was taken to Evin prison, where dissidents are held, and the reason for her arrest has not yet been formalised,” Chora said in a statement.

Sala also worked for Italian newspaper Il Foglio, which said she had been in Iran “to report on a country she knows and loves”. “Journalism is not a crime, even in countries that repress all freedoms, including those of the press. Bring her home,” it said.

Sala, reported to be 29 years old, last posted on X on Dec 17, with a link to a podcast entitled “A conversation on patriarchy in Tehran”. She had previously reported from Ukraine.

Published in Dawn, December 29th, 2024