MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
OK, let's head overseas now. Italy's Foreign Ministry summoned Iran's ambassador today to demand the immediate release of an Italian reporter from an Iranian prison. Cecilia Sala was working in Iran under a journalist visa. She was seized on December 19. That was three days after Italian police arrested an Iranian man wanted by U.S. authorities. From Rome, Megan Williams reports.
MEGAN WILLIAMS, BYLINE: Popular Italian podcaster and freelance reporter Cecilia Sala's last report from Iran on December 16...
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CECILIA SALA: (Speaking Italian).
WILLIAMS: ...Speaking into a smartphone camera about changes in the country...
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SALA: (Speaking Italian).
WILLIAMS: ...How thousands of women in the Islamic Republic now no longer fear going out in public without a veil...
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SALA: (Speaking Italian).
WILLIAMS: ...And how Israel's leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, continues to make threats after Israeli airstrikes in October. Three days later, the 29-year-old was arrested as she was heading back here to Italy for the holidays. She's since been in solitary confinement inside Iran's infamously harsh Evin Prison, in a frigid cell with neon lights on 24/7, her eyeglasses taken away.
JASON REZAIAN: My first thought was, here's another one.
WILLIAMS: That's Jason Rezaian. Ten years ago, he was the bureau chief for The Washington Post in Tehran and was held in the same prison for a year and a half.
REZAIAN: Well, she's probably being subjected to very harsh interrogations based on nothing.
WILLIAMS: Rezaian says reporting from Iran is risky, but Sala's arrest is unlikely related to her journalism. Instead, it's likely a reprisal. Her detention came three days after Italy arrested Iranian Mohammad Abedini in Milan. Abedini was wanted on a U.S. warrant for allegedly supplying drone parts prosecutors say were used in an attack that killed three U.S. soldiers in Jordan at the beginning of last year. The Iranian embassy in Rome linked Sala's arrest to that of Abedini for the first time on Thursday and, so far, has only charged her for breaching Islamic law.
REZAIAN: The fact that she hasn't been accused of anything specific yet is just an indication of the Iranian side slow-playing its hand.
ROBERTO MENOTTI: Sala was very unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
WILLIAMS: Roberto Menotti is deputy editor-in-chief of the think tank journal Aspenia and expert on Iran relations with Europe and the U.S. While he calls it a silver lining - the fact that Iran didn't lay a specific charge against Sala - most others arrested like her are accused of spying. He says...
MENOTTI: They're probably willing to negotiate on specific issues, but they're not interested in reactivating a general dialogue with Europe, with Italy, with the U.S. And that makes them very dangerous. They don't have much to lose.
WILLIAMS: The American request for extradition from Italy of Iranian Abedini makes her case dicier, he says.
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ANTONIO TAJANI: (Speaking Italian).
WILLIAMS: In the meantime, Italy's foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, says Italy is working to solve what he calls an extremely intricate problem. Rezaian says Sala and all foreigners arrested by Iran on what Western countries call spurious charges deserve their government's full resolve in securing their release.
REZAIAN: This is a phenomenon that a growing number of authoritarian states are using - a tool - a foreign policy tool.
WILLIAMS: He says the U.S. and allies can only put an end to these kinds of imprisonments with a unified strategy, not case-by-case deals.
For NPR News, I'm Megan Williams in Rome.
(SOUNDBITE OF BUN B AND STATIK SELEKTAH'S "STILL TRILL") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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