The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Tehran police detained journalist Cecilia Sala while she was in Iran for a news report on Thursday, December 19.

Cecilia Sala, who works for the newspaper Il Foglio and hosts a podcast program at Chora Media, has contributed to Italian publications such as Vanity Fair, Wired and L’Espresso. Sala left Rome on December 12 and went to Tehran, where she conducted various interviews and prepared three episodes for her podcast program during her stay. She was expected to return to Rome last Friday but was detained on Thursday, December 19. Sala released a new episode of her podcast program with Iranian comedian Zeynep Mousavi. During the broadcast, Mousavi criticised the compulsory headscarf.

Chora Media, an Italian podcast publisher for which Sala worked, said she had travelled from Rome to Iran on a journalist visa on December 12 and was due to return on December 20. But she went quiet on December 19 and did not board her flight. Shortly afterwards, she called her mother to say she had been arrested, and it said, In the statement made by Chora Media on Friday, it was claimed that Sala was in Evin Prison in Tehran, where dissidents were taken in Iran, and that she had been kept in a cell for more than a week. “We are sharing this sad news now because the Italian authorities and Cecilia’s family asked us to keep quiet, hoping they would get quick results, but unfortunately, this did not happen.”

In a statement, the Italian foreign ministry said that Cecilia Sala was detained on December 19 by police in Tehran. It added that Italy’s ambassador, Paola Amadei, had visited her earlier Friday. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani later told RAI News that the diplomat had spent around 30 minutes with Sala and that the journalist was in “good health” and was being held alone in a cell.

Sala last posted on the X channel on December 17 with a link to a podcast titled “A conversation on patriarchy in Tehran”.