Dear Feltri, you have read that Cecilia Sala sleeps on the floor and is not given anything to eat and suffers thousands of hardships in the Iranian prison where she is kept imprisoned. He lives in a closet, basically. Yet Minister Tajani had told us that Cecilia is well and that she is receiving civil treatment. What do you think?
Francesco Rossi
None of us seriously expected Cecilia Sala to be treated civilly by a regime that has nothing civil about it. And those who expected it are perhaps too naive. This is why it is necessary to act to bring our fellow citizen home as soon as possible, as the conditions of detention in Islamic countries, particularly in Iran, are so harsh and inhumane that they undermine the physical and mental health of the inmate in a serious way, sometimes irreversible. This girl risks coming to a bad end, and I say this in a brutal way, I am aware of it, but it is pure truth. Let’s not beat around the bush. It takes extraordinary mental balance to resist certain conditions of confinement and I hope Sala possesses it. The cell in which the journalist was locked up is tiny, enough to barely allow her to lie down, but not to move, and from that cell the young woman, who sleeps on the floor, never leaves, except to use the bathroom, at her request , a request that, apparently, does not always get a response, the wait can be quite long, even hours. Cecilia suffers from the cold and also suffers from the intrusiveness of a blinding neon light that is never, ever turned off, a form of physical and also psychological torture. Food is scarce. And you certainly can’t get along with a few dates, passed through a small crack. Everything is in short supply. But above all, there is a lack of social contacts that are vital in situations like these. The young woman was able to hear her parents on New Year’s Eve, that’s all. He doesn’t see anyone. And, even more importantly, we still don’t know the official reasons for the arrest. Sala allegedly violated unspecified rules of Islamic law. Which? We ignore it.
Who among us can then expect reliability, respect for human rights and the rules of international law from the Iranian authority? The Foreign Minister is the Foreign Minister and currently all the effort is concentrated on the objective of negotiating the Italian’s release. I am convinced that Tajani, who is not a novice, is well aware from the beginning that what the Islamists who are holding Sala hostage assure us should be taken with a grain of salt, but he cannot make statements that would risk compromising the negotiation. It is necessary to place trust in the work of the executive and also in that of our intelligence, which, since Cecilia’s arrest, has never stopped working for her return to her homeland. What do the Iranians mean when they tell us that Cecilia enjoys good treatment? Well, for them that is excellent treatment for a prisoner, although it is not in line with the universal principles of the free West, although for us such treatment amounts to abuse and torture. These people here are used to beating, beating, beating, raping, whipping and killing prisoners, women who opposed the regime, those who raised their voices in defense of their gender, or those who for some silly reason, were even a strand out of place, have been labeled dangerous and subversive. I believe that Sala should not have gone there, without guarantees, without protection, a little lightly and unawares, even if he had already done so on his way home safe and sound. But now these observations make no sense. I’ve done them before and I won’t do them again. Instead, it is useful to deal with these Islamic beasts so that Cecilia can quickly leave that niche in which she was segregated and leave for Italy.
I would be in favor of an immediate exchange, i.e. the return of the Iranian citizen detained in Italy who was captured in Malpensa, at the request of the USA which requested his extradition, a few days before Cecilia’s arrest in Tehran.
Let them take it back too. We want Sala at home.