TOThe reporter did not receive any parcels with basic necessities, as the regime had reported. In three phone calls to his mother, father and partner, Daniele Raineri, Cecilia Sala, 28 years old, described the conditions of her detention in Evin prison in Iran: “Hurry up,” she asked.
She had gone to work in Iran on a journalist visa. On the penultimate day, shortly before returning to Italy, she was arrested by the Iranian authorities and locked up in an isolation cell.
The conditions of the Italian journalist arrested in Iran Cecilia Sala, the shocking phone calls
A cell as long as her, without a mattress to sleep on, without a blanket (and the cold in Evin, the inmates say, is “painful”). Without the embassy package with some sweets, books and basic necessities that they said they had delivered to her. Arrested in Iran without the official reason having yet been clarified (she allegedly violated “the laws of the Islamic Republic”), Cecilia Sala has not seen anyone since December 27th when she met the ambassador Paola Amedei.
She is given the same treatment as other political prisoners in the prison, known as the University, “Daneshgaa”, for the high number of intellectuals and students incarcerated. The guards pass her food through a crack in the door, the neon lights are on 24 hours a day, and she has no mask to protect her eyes. In fact, her eyeglasses were also confiscated. This is what the journalist, signed by, said The Sheet and author of very popular podcast Stories for Chora Mediain the phone calls made to her family, who imagined her in better conditions, given the initial information. The Farnesina called for “immediate release” and “total guarantees on his detention conditions”.
Cecilia Sala, born in 1995, author and voice of Stories, Chora Media’s daily podcast, writes on the Foglio … Pordenone, 17 September 2023. Photo by Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images
Prison and torture in Iran
Article 38 of the Iranian Constitution specifies that «they are any type of torture or extortion of confessions is prohibited or acquisition of information, coercion of individuals to testify, forced oaths. This evidence lacks credibility.” But it is clear that the rule is violated in the regime’s prisons, never respected in the corridors of Evin. Many testimonies from women who passed through the same cells say so.
Isolation itself has always been the main tool for putting psychological pressure on prisoners.
Just three days ago, Elahe Ejbari, an Iranian student who escaped to Germany and was detained for three months in Evin, also in solitary confinement, told the Courier: «In my single cell there was no mattress or pillow, but only two blankets. I was freezing to death. There were no windows. I had no books, pens, anything. If I had to go to the bathroom, I knocked on the door. The guards never came. Sometimes I waited hours. I was trying to stay alert and not lose clarity.” The student wished Cecilia Sala freedom, or, at least, to be «taken to the women’s section of the prison, where Iranian activists were undoubtedly present they will become her friends and they will guide her into the hell of Evin».
Why Cecilia Sala was arrested
The fact that almost two weeks after the arrest there is still no specific complaint would demonstrate that the arrest of the journalist is a retaliation for the arrest in Italy of Mohammad Abedini-Najafabad: an Iranian engineer expert in drones who has been detained in Italy since December 16 to be extradited to the United States. In other words, Cecilia Sala would be a “bargaining coin”.
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