Italian reporter jailed in Tehran returns to Italy

by Ella IDE / Alexandria SAGE

An Italian journalist arrested and jailed in Iran since December has been freed and returned to Rome on Wednesday, even as a diplomatic spat between the two countries lingers over an Iranian held in Milan.

A plane carrying Cecilia Sala landed at Rome's Ciampino Airport on Wednesday afternoon, hours after Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's office announced her release.

"Our compatriot has been released by the Iranian authorities and is on her way back to Italy," Meloni's office said in a statement, adding that her release was the result of "intense work through diplomatic and intelligence channels".

A photo of a smiling Sala with Meloni and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani was published on Ilpost.it, which said it was taken by Sala's boyfriend, a journalist at the online news site.

Sala, 29, was arrested on December 19, soon after the United States and Italy arrested two Iranian nationals over export violations linked to a deadly attack on American servicemen.

The journalist, who writes for the Italian daily Il Foglio and is the host of a news podcast produced by Chora Media, was kept in isolation in Tehran's Evin prison.

Sala told her family she was forced to sleep on the floor in a cell with the lights permanently on.

Sala travelled to Iran on December 13 on a journalist's visa. She was arrested six days later for "violating the law of the Islamic Republic of Iran", said the country's culture ministry, which oversees and accredits foreign journalists.

She had been due to return home the following day.

- Damaged relations -

Tensions between Italy and Iran flared last week after tit-for-tat summonings of each other's ambassadors, with Italy protesting the detention of Sala and Tehran contesting the holding of Iranian national Mohammad Abedini in a Milan jail.

Abedini, 38, was arrested in Italy last month at the behest of the United States, which alleges he supplied sophisticated drone navigation technology to Iran's military in violation of US sanctions laws.

The components were later used in a January drone strike at a Jordanian military base near the Syrian border that killed three American service members, according to US justice authorities.

A second man, naturaliZed American-Iranian Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi, 42, was arrested in the United States and charged with conspiring with Abedini.

Iran has denied the accusations.

Iran's foreign ministry has called Abedini's arrest in Italy an "illegal act" that "damages longstanding Iran-Italy relations."

On Monday, Tehran denied any link between Sala's arrest and Abedini.

© Agence France-Presse