The Italian government has demanded the release of journalist Cecilia Sala, arrested in Iran without due process. Iran countered with a prisoner swap, demanding the release of Iranian national Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi, detained in Italy on US charges.
The Italian government on Thursday summoned the Iran ian ambassador to demand the release of journalist Cecilia Sala, who was arrested without due process or clear charges in Tehran on December 19. Iran responded that Sala will only be freed if Italy releases Mohammad Abedini Najafabadi, an Iran ian national arrested by Italy on behalf of the United States on December 16. Abedini, 38, is a drone expert accused of supplying advanced technology to the Iran ian military in defiance of U.S. sanctions.
Components provided by Abedini’s company, San’at Danesh Rahpooyan Aflak (SDRA), specialize in creating navigation modules for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The company provides these modules to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government in 2019. Abedini was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on December 16 for conspiring with Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi, a dual U.S.-Iranian national, to illegally procure electronic components from American companies for use by the IRGC. Abedini was taken into custody at an airport in Milan, Italy, at the request of the United States, while Sadeghi was taken into custody in Massachusetts. Sala is an Italian journalist who also hosts a news podcast. She had traveled to Tehran on December 13 with a journalist’s visa. She was arrested the day before she was scheduled to return to Italy and vaguely charged with “violating the laws of the Islamic Republic.” Sala’s last podcast, posted the day before her arrest, concerned a female Iranian standup comedian named Zeynab Mousavi who was arrested in October 2023 for speaking out against Iran’s laws requiring women to cover their heads. The podcast episode was about Mousavi speaking up at a time when the brutal Iranian regime was struggling with nationwide protests over the killing of a young Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amini, kidnapped by Iranian “morality police” for not wearing her headscarf properly and believed to have been beaten to death
ITALY IRAN JOURNALIST ARREST PRISONER SWAP DIPLOMATIC TENSIONS
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