After Iran elected a extra average president final 12 months, Cecilia Sala, an Italian journalist, thought one thing could have modified within the nation, which she had been overlaying from afar.
For 2 years, Iran had rejected her software for a journalist visa, nevertheless it granted her one after the election. Colleagues and mates instructed her Iran’s new authorities appeared extra open to overseas reporters because it sought to restore relations with Europe.
Ms. Sala, 29, had not traveled to Iran since 2021, earlier than an uprising led by ladies and women demanded an finish to clerical rule. So she took a airplane to Tehran, the capital.
“I needed to see with my eyes what had modified,” she stated in an interview just lately in Rome.
As a substitute, she received firsthand expertise of what had not modified.
On Dec. 19, as she was getting ready an episode of an Italian podcast that she hosts on daily basis, two brokers from the intelligence wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps got here to her lodge room in Tehran. When she tried to seize her cellphone, she stated, one in every of them threw it to the opposite facet of 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 she requested what she was accused of, she was instructed, she stated, that she had dedicated “many unlawful actions in lots of locations.”
Iran has used the detention of foreign and dual citizens as a cornerstone of its overseas coverage for practically 5 a long time, because the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The detainees — journalists, businesspeople, assist staff, diplomats, vacationers — are successfully hostages whom Tehran leverages with different international locations to swap prisoners and free frozen funds.
Ms. Sala feared from the beginning that she had been taken hostage for a swap.
She stated she had learn that Italy had arrested an Iranian engineer three days earlier on the request of america. The engineer, Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi, was needed for his function in procuring drone know-how for Iran that was utilized in an assault that killed three American troopers in Jordan.
“I used to be trapped in a sport a lot larger than I used to be,” she stated.
Ms. Sala stated she apprehensive that if america insisted on extraditing Mr. Abedini, she would possibly linger in jail for years, her launch contingent on the choice of the incoming American president, Donald J. Trump.
At Evin, the guards gave Ms. Sala a jail uniform, she stated — a grey tracksuit, a blue shirt and pants, a blue hijab and an extended overlaying generally known as a chador. They seized her glasses, with out which she is all however blind.
Her cell had two blankets and no mattress or pillow. The sunshine was continually on, she stated, and she or he couldn’t sleep.
She was blindfolded throughout hours of practically day by day interrogations wherein she sat dealing with a wall, she stated.
Her interrogator spoke flawless English, she stated, and signaled that he knew Italy effectively by asking whether or not she most well-liked Roman or Neapolitan pizza crust.
She was permitted to talk at instances along with her dad and mom and boyfriend again in Italy, she stated, and when her mom instructed reporters there about her daughter’s situations in jail, the interrogator instructed Ms. Sala that due to these remarks, Iran would detain her for for much longer.
“Their sport is to offer you hope, after which use your hope to interrupt you,” Ms. Sala stated.
By a slim opening in her cell door, she stated she heard sounds of crying, vomiting, footsteps and banging that sounded as if somebody was operating and hitting his or her head in opposition to the door.
“I believed in the event that they don’t take me out, I’m going to additionally find yourself like this,” Ms. Sala stated. She feared that in the event that they stored her for lengthy, she stated, “I might come again an animal, not an individual.”
On Jan. 8, Ms. Sala was on a airplane residence, and shortly after, Italy freed Mr. Abedini. Ms. Sala was released partially with the help of Elon Musk, two Iranian officers stated. “I performed a small function,” Mr. Musk later wrote on X.
Ms. Sala stated she was wanting to return to her work.
“I’m in a rush to return to being a journalist,” she stated. “To inform another person’s story.”
Her ordeal has reverberated broadly, significantly for journalists desirous to journey to Iran.
“Clearly, I’m not going again to Iran,” Ms. Sala stated. “Not less than so long as there may be the Islamic Republic.”