On Thursday in Rome, Italy’s international ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador, demanding the speedy launch of Italian reporter Cecilia Sala from Iran’s infamous Evin jail.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
OK, let’s head abroad now. Italy’s Overseas Ministry summoned Iran’s ambassador as we speak to demand the speedy launch of an Italian reporter from an Iranian jail. Cecilia Sala was working in Iran below a journalist visa. She was seized on December 19. That was three days after Italian police arrested an Iranian man wished by U.S. authorities. From Rome, Megan Williams reviews.
MEGAN WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Widespread Italian podcaster and freelance reporter Cecilia Sala’s final report from Iran on December 16…
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CECILIA SALA: (Talking Italian).
WILLIAMS: …Talking right into a smartphone digital camera about adjustments within the nation…
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SALA: (Talking Italian).
WILLIAMS: …How 1000’s of girls within the Islamic Republic now not worry going out in public with out a veil…
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SALA: (Talking Italian).
WILLIAMS: …And the way Israel’s chief, Benjamin Netanyahu, continues to make threats after Israeli airstrikes in October. Three days later, the 29-year-old was arrested as she was heading again right here to Italy for the vacations. She’s since been in solitary confinement inside Iran’s infamously harsh Evin Jail, in a frigid cell with neon lights on 24/7, her eyeglasses taken away.
JASON REZAIAN: My first thought was, this is one other one.
WILLIAMS: That is Jason Rezaian. Ten years in the past, he was the bureau chief for The Washington Put up in Tehran and was held in the identical jail for a 12 months and a half.
REZAIAN: Properly, she’s in all probability being subjected to very harsh interrogations primarily based on nothing.
WILLIAMS: Rezaian says reporting from Iran is dangerous, however Sala’s arrest is unlikely associated to her journalism. As a substitute, it is probably a reprisal. Her detention got here three days after Italy arrested Iranian Mohammad Abedini in Milan. Abedini was wished on a U.S. warrant for allegedly supplying drone elements prosecutors say had been utilized in an assault that killed three U.S. troopers in Jordan originally of final 12 months. The Iranian embassy in Rome linked Sala’s arrest to that of Abedini for the primary time on Thursday and, to this point, has solely charged her for breaching Islamic regulation.
REZAIAN: The truth that she hasn’t been accused of something particular but is simply a sign of the Iranian facet slow-playing its hand.
ROBERTO MENOTTI: Sala was very unlucky to be within the flawed place on the flawed time.
WILLIAMS: Roberto Menotti is deputy editor-in-chief of the suppose tank journal Aspenia and knowledgeable on Iran relations with Europe and the U.S. Whereas he calls it a silver lining – the truth that Iran did not lay a particular cost in opposition to Sala – most others arrested like her are accused of spying. He says…
MENOTTI: They’re in all probability keen to barter on particular points, however they are not focused on reactivating a common dialogue with Europe, with Italy, with the U.S. And that makes them very harmful. They do not have a lot to lose.
WILLIAMS: The American request for extradition from Italy of Iranian Abedini makes her case dicier, he says.
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ANTONIO TAJANI: (Talking Italian).
WILLIAMS: Within the meantime, Italy’s international minister, Antonio Tajani, says Italy is working to resolve what he calls an especially intricate downside. Rezaian says Sala and all foreigners arrested by Iran on what Western international locations name spurious expenses deserve their authorities’s full resolve in securing their launch.
REZAIAN: This can be a phenomenon {that a} rising variety of authoritarian states are utilizing – a instrument – a international coverage instrument.
WILLIAMS: He says the U.S. and allies can solely put an finish to those sorts of imprisonments with a unified technique, not case-by-case offers.
For NPR Information, I am Megan Williams in Rome.
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