After Iran selected a extra average president final yr, Cecilia Sala, Italian journalistthought that one thing might need modified within the nation she was reflecting from afar.
For 2 years, Iran rejected her request for a journalistic visa, however after the election, it granted her one. Colleagues and pals have stated that Iran’s new authorities seems extra open to international reporters because it seeks to revive relations with Europe.
Ms Sala, 29, has not traveled to Iran since 2021, earlier than one uprising led by girls and ladies, demanded an finish to the clergy. So she took a airplane to Tehran, the capital.
“I needed to see with my very own eyes what had modified,” she stated in a latest interview in Rome.
As an alternative, she bought first-hand expertise of what hasn’t modified.
On December 19, whereas she was making ready an episode of an Italian podcast she hosts every single day, two brokers from the intelligence wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps got here to her resort room in Tehran. When she tried to seize her telephone, she stated, one among them threw it throughout the room.
They blindfolded her, Ms. Sala stated, and took her to the infamous Evin jail, the place most of Iran’s political prisoners are held and a few are tortured.
At one level, when requested what she was accused of, she stated she had dedicated “loads of unlawful acts in loads of locations.”
Iran has used detention of foreign and dual citizens as a cornerstone of his international coverage for practically 5 many years, for the reason that 1979 Islamic Revolution. The detainees – journalists, businessmen, humanitarian employees, diplomats, vacationers – are successfully hostages that Tehran makes use of with different nations to change prisoners and launch frozen funds.
Ms Sala feared from the beginning {that a} hostage had been taken for change.
She stated she had learn that Italy had arrested an Iranian engineer three days earlier on the request of the USA. the engineer, Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi, was needed for his alleged function in offering drone know-how to Iran that was utilized in an assault that killed three American troopers in Jordan.
“I used to be trapped in a sport a lot greater than me,” she stated.
Ms. Sala stated she nervous that if the USA pressed for Mr. Abedini’s extradition, she might stay in jail for years, together with her launch depending on a choice by incoming US President Donald J. Trump.
At Evin, guards gave Ms Sala a jail uniform, she stated – a grey tracksuit, a blue shirt and trousers, a blue hijab and an extended masking often known as a chador. They confiscated her glasses, with out which she is sort of blind.
Her cell had two blankets and no mattress or pillow. She stated the lamp was on on a regular basis and he or she could not sleep.
After just some days, when she rigorously examined the pale yellow partitions of her cell centimeter by centimeter, she observed a stain of blood, parallel marks, she stated, maybe left by a earlier inmate marking the times, and the phrase “freedom” in Farsi.
She was blindfolded throughout hours of near-daily interrogation through which she sat going through a wall, she stated.
Her interrogator spoke impeccable English, she stated, and signaled that he knew Italy properly by asking her if she most well-liked Roman or Neapolitan pizza.
She was allowed to talk sometimes to her dad and mom and boyfriend in Italy, she stated, and when her mom informed reporters there about her daughter’s situations in jail, the interrogator informed Ms. Sala that due to these remarks, Iran would detain her for for much longer.
“Their sport is to provide you hope after which use your hope to interrupt you,” Ms Sala stated.
By means of the slender opening of her cell door, she stated she heard the sounds of crying, vomiting, footsteps and banging, which seemed like somebody working and banging their head towards the door.
“I assumed in the event that they did not take me out, I’d find yourself like this too,” Ms Sala stated. She was afraid that in the event that they stored her lengthy, she stated, “I’ll come again as an animal, not a person.”
On January 8, Ms Sala was on a airplane dwelling and shortly afterwards Italy launched Mr Abedini. Mrs. Sala was released partly with the help of Elon Musk, two Iranian officers stated. “I performed a small half” Mr. Musk later wrote to X.
Ms Sala stated she will’t wait to get again to work.
“I am in a rush to get again as a journalist,” she stated. “To inform the story to another person.”
Her ordeal has resonated broadly, particularly for journalists who need to journey to Iran.
“Clearly, I am not going again to Iran,” Ms Sala stated. “No less than so long as the Islamic Republic exists.
Farnaz Fasihi contributed reporting from New York.
