“Cecilia is a force of nature.” These are the words of Francesca Milano, director of Chora News, describing Cecilia Sala just a few days after her return to Italy. Sala, a journalist for Il Foglio and host of the podcast Stories, spent 21 days imprisoned in Tehran’s Evin Prison. Milano’s words paint the picture of a determined woman who managed to endure her captivity in Iran with remarkable strength.
It all began on December 19, when the reporter was arrested in Tehran, where she was working on assignment. Francesca Milano recalls those moments with a mixture of anxiety and hope: “We realized something was wrong when we didn’t receive the podcast episode at the scheduled time—Cecilia is always punctual. At first, we thought it might be due to a power outage, but when she didn’t check in for her return flight the next day, we knew something had happened.”
In the meantime, Sala had been taken from her apartment and placed in solitary confinement, without a mattress, pillow, glasses, or books. The neon light remained on 24 hours a day. “I wished for a book to read, to immerse myself in a story that wasn’t my own,” Sala recounted in the Stories episode recorded after her return. The first two weeks were the hardest: daily interrogations, accusations of acts she had never committed, and a deliberate strategy designed to confuse her. Sala became a pawn in a much larger game, which many experts believe was linked to Iranian engineer Mohammad Abedini Najafabani, currently detained at the Opera prison in Milan, in what appeared to be a complex diplomatic standoff involving the United States, Iran, and Italy.
Initially, strict confidentiality was maintained around the case to facilitate diplomatic efforts. However, on December 27, the arrest was made public. “Making the news public was a relief for us,” Milano explains, “because it allowed us to talk about it beyond the small group at Chora Media.” The anxiety and fear, however, only grew when Iran accused the journalist from Il Foglio of violating the laws of the Islamic Republic. “We asked ourselves what law she could have broken: we re-listened to all her questions, re-watched the videos and photos, but we couldn’t find any violation.”
The news of Sala’s release came as a surprise—no one expected it to happen so quickly. “When we learned that Cecilia had been released—through a statement from Palazzo Chigi—it was a wonderfully unexpected moment.” The Chora Media newsroom heard of her release while Sala was already on the flight home, which landed in the afternoon of Thursday, January 9, at Ciampino Airport in Rome. “I was amazed at how well she seemed, how cheerful and happy she was to be back,” Milano recalls. “I had feared she would be more shaken, but she immediately offered to record the interview and tell her story. Perhaps speaking about it helped her.”
After fearing the worst—a formal accusation by Iran that could have significantly delayed her return—what remains now is the desire to resume working together and to tell this story for the sake of all those who, even today, remain behind bars.
