Journalist Cecilia Sala arrested in Tehran. She is in Evin, in solitary confinement for a week. Tajani: "She is in good health".

"Cecilia Sala was arrested in Tehran on Thursday 19 December and has been in detention in an isolation cell for a week," Chora Media added in a note. "She was taken to Evin prison, where dissidents are held, and the reason for her arrest has not yet been formalised. We are only making this terrible news public now because the Italian authorities and Cecilia's parents had asked us to remain silent, a silence that would hopefully lead to a speedy release. Which unfortunately has not yet happened,' the note reads.

'Dr Sala had previously had the opportunity to make two phone calls with relatives. In agreement with the journalist's parents, the Farnesina calls for the utmost discretion from the press in order to facilitate a quick and positive resolution of the matter,' the ministry adds in the note.

"Cecilia Sala is an extraordinarily courageous journalist, who for the past two years has edited the Stories podcast for Chora News, the most watched daily in Italy. She is used to going into the field: she is not a freelancer, but she is regularly hired by Chora, she travels with all the protections and she entered Iran in agreement with the authorities, in a regular and transparent way. She is an Italian journalist who was arrested while doing her job. At the moment, no charges have been formalised'. This was emphasised by Mario Calabresi, director and co-founder of Chora Media. 'Cecilia,' Calabresi recalls, 'was in Ukraine, for many weeks at the front, but also in Sudan, and then in Iran, which is her passion. Indeed, Iranian girls and their courage are her passion: she wanted to go back there, to talk to the many friends whose stories she told in the book 'The Fire', which she wrote for Mondadori. She wanted to give a voice to these girls who no longer wear the veil, who dream of a different life, who seek their freedom'.

Cecilia Sala, Calabresi points out, 'got a regular visa for eight days and started doing her interviews. Three episodes of the podcast have already been released and she had material to make more. Thursday was her last day, she would return to Italy on Friday. In the early afternoon, when we expected her to send the episode, nothing happened and her phone went silent. Until the next morning we heard nothing: we verified that she had not taken the plane home and had not even checked in. Together with her family and her companion, Daniele Raineri, we alerted the Farnesina crisis unit. The embassy was alerted and sent a person to the airport, but there was no trace of Cecilia. Late Friday morning she was allowed to make a brief phone call to her mother, but she was evidently reading a sheet of paper with the few sentences she could say: when her mother tried to ask her where she was or why she had been arrested, she merely repeated 'I can't'. From that moment on, we kept in daily contact with the Farnesina and Palazzo Chigi, maintaining the pact of silence in the hope that it would allow Cecilia's release more quickly. Today the Farnesina made the arrest official because it realised that the news could no longer be kept'. For eight days in Evin prison, 'yesterday Cecilia had the chance for a second phone call and she called her parents and her partner', while today 'she was finally able to receive a visit from the ambassador who brought her clothes, food, books that we hope they will give her. She is in solitary confinement, the situation is very distressing,' Calabresi concludes.