Behind the scenes of Cecilia Sala's release. Italian Ambassador to Iran Paola Amadei speaks

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Twenty-one days. That's how long Cecilia Sala's illegitimate and unjust detention lasted in Tehran's notorious Evin prison. And for twenty-one days, every day, Ambassador Paola Amadei kept a diary: ‘Actually, it is a notebook, but a diary is fine too,’ Amadei, who has been head of the Italian mission in the Iranian capital for just under a year, explains to Foglio. ‘It is very important in our work to keep a note of everything, of everything’. Of words spoken, but also of impressions made at the time: ‘I have carried it with me since the first day of this crisis. I jotted down everything in it, from the meetings to the conversations I had, and then Minister Tajani's indications, but also the little things, the needs that came to mind that might be useful for Cecilia, what her parents told me'. It is not uncommon for a diplomat, anywhere in the world, to have to manage the detention of a fellow citizen. In those cases there are codified rules and protocols, which are studied right from diplomatic school. But the case of the journalist Cecilia Sala was completely different and concerns an entirely different category: for Foreign Ministry officials it is a crisis. Every single step can compromise negotiations, have consequences. And at the centre is the person, behind the protocols to the rules and duties of office. A person deprived of his freedoms while doing his job, about whom we have only fragmentary, contradictory news, in a game of balances that is often not easy to manage.

‘These are also days of joy, for all of us,’ Amadei tells Foglio. We ask her what is the first sentence she jotted down in her diary-notepad: ‘The first sentence is: “health conditions”. Really that was a big concern, perhaps the main one, right from the start'.

But in this conversation with Il Foglio Amadei wants to start from the beginning: ‘Contact with the Farnesina crisis unit began on the evening of 19 December, because Cecilia's mobile phone was unreachable,’ the ambassador explains. The next day, the journalist had a flight around 11 am: ‘Seeing that she was not answering her mobile phone, an embassy official went to the airport because we knew her return flight and so we thought that maybe we would see her there’.

‘Maybe the mobile phone was simply out of battery power,’ Amadei explains, ‘or maybe he had lost it, or he couldn't answer the phone - you know, here sometimes phone calls go dead, the line stops working at any moment. So the official goes to the airport, and when we realised she was no longer coming, we called the crisis unit back. On the 20th, we saw that there was no trace of Cecilia and the phone call with her parents confirmed this. At that point, from Italy where I was for the Ambassadors‘ conference, I left immediately for Tehran, it was a case I had to follow from the beginning’.

From there the diplomatic action begins, and all the meetings with Iranian government officials: Amadei flips through the pages of his notebook: ‘Here is the meeting with the Director General for European Affairs, with the Director for Consular Affairs, with the Deputy Minister for Political Affairs, that is, the number two in Foreign Affairs. In all these meetings, on Minister Tajani's instructions, we asked first of all for his immediate release', and reads: “Immediate release”, “best possible conditions of detention”. And then ‘the charges, whatever they were, and on every single occasion we asked for an assurance that she would be given the best possible conditions of detention’. To really understand the conditions of a detainee in Evin prison, however, one needs to enter Evin prison. Was this her first time there? ‘Yes, it was.

The ambassadress tells us the title of one of the most important pages, the sentence she wrote at the beginning of the blank sheet, in block letters: ‘CONSULAR VISIT 27 DECEMBER 11 HOURS, TEHERAN’. ‘We asked many times to anticipate the visit as much as possible, also because it was Christmas time’. The ambassador explains that Iranian officials informed her of the possibility of the urgent consular visit the day before, on 26 December. ‘I went together with my deputy, Andrea Benzo. We had the interview in a room, with two guards, an official and a prison officer who had accompanied Cecilia. In all, it lasted about half an hour, in English'. English is imposed so that those monitoring the interview can hear and above all understand. There is a protocol for this kind of conversation on the part of diplomats, and the first thing they have to talk about is the prisoner's state of health and whether he has urgent needs, including those relating, for example, to medication. ‘In these cases one asks everything: I asked for example about all food intolerances, if he had allergies and we had to notify the prison, if he needed special medication. These are intimate questions, but this is also part of the diplomat's job, says Amadei. 

‘As I said that very day, Cecilia's physical condition was good. Certainly the days that followed affected her condition, but we managed to get her to contact her family’. ‘The impression I got from visiting her was that of a strong and courageous young woman, certainly tried, but very lucid’. The ambassador flips through her notebook: ‘Thinking back, demonstrating the passion with which she does her job, I remember that among the things we talked about, she at one point asked me if something had happened in the world during her detention. She actually asked me: ‘What happened during those days? Did anything happen?' She wanted to know: it was a week in which she was without news, isolated from the world'. Then the medicines, of course, ‘but she wanted glasses above all, and she wanted books, which we then brought her - there was a lot of talk in the press about this package’.  Before leaving the room, Amadei explains, ‘I hugged her and told her that the government was making every effort to free her and I tried to make her feel the closeness of all of us and to give her courage. I told her what Minister Tajani had instructed me to tell her, namely that she was not alone. And so we just had to wait - I told her this in English and Italian'.

Back to the parcel. Which wasn't a parcel, but a black bag, which was loaded onto the plane and brought back home, together with the suitcase Cecilia had for her trip. That bag ‘I prepared it the very evening of the consular visit, we put everything we could in it, everything: clothes, books - some of the classics on mum's recommendation - and then also some specific books Cecilia had asked for, which I got the same day. In the evening, the bag was ready, even of things that came to mind, warm and comfortable clothes that could be useful to her'. The ambassador emphasises that there was everything, she doesn't go into details, but even in the preparation of the package there is a strategy: you can't put too many things in so as not to give the impression that it will be a long detention, neither to the arrested nor to the jailers, and therefore to the government. Is it true what was written, about panettone cakes? ‘There were also some panettoni, some chocolates. It was Christmas time, and the idea was to make her feel a bit close to home’. 
 

‘We delivered the backpack the next day, the morning of 28 December. I was very sorry that it was not delivered the same day, it was delivered to her a few days later'. The Iranian authorities, the ambassador told the Foglio, had not told them what they could put in and what they could not: ‘However, we knew that once the bag was delivered, they would check it. We explained that panettone was our Christmas cake and they made an exception because it is forbidden to bring food into the penitentiary'.

There is another issue that has been much discussed in the newspapers in recent days: whether something happened in the two days between Abedini's arrest in Italy and Sala's arrest in Tehran, a mechanism that perhaps jammed in communication.  ‘Without going into details, with regard to Iran there are general indications, which always apply.Not only in this circumstance, but also in others.The Farnesina's indications on travelling to Iran can be found on the Viaggiare Sicuri website.’ 
‘What I can tell you is that the government action never stopped in the days immediately following until yesterday, when it was clear that we were close to a conclusion.’

The day of release arrived, on the very day the Iranians had promised another consular visit to the prison. While Cecilia Sala was being escorted to the airport, Ambassador Amadei was at the Evin prison and then, after contacting the Foreign Office, on the phone with the Farnesina. What was the last sentence she jotted down in her notebook? ‘It is the conversation with the minister, when I called him back on 8 January, and the impression was that we were close to a positive conclusion’. 

Paola Amadei, born in 1964, is a diplomat who knows the region well: she was head of mission in Oman, Bahrain, and at the beginning of 2024 she was talked about because she was the first female ambassador to hold that position in the Islamic Republic of Iran: ‘I have to tell you that the fact that I am a woman has never constituted a limitation to the fulfilment of my duties as head of mission. I am honoured to represent my country in Iran. 
I feel a sense of great responsibility, it is a great honour'.

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• Giulia Pompili

• È nata il 4 luglio. Giornalista del Foglio da più di un decennio, scrive soprattutto di Asia orientale, di Giappone e Coree, di Cina e dei suoi rapporti con il resto del mondo, ma anche di sicurezza, Difesa e politica internazionale. È autrice della newsletter settimanale Katane, la prima in italiano sull’area dell’Indo-Pacifico, e ha scritto tre libri: "Sotto lo stesso cielo. Giappone, Taiwan e Corea, i rivali di Pechino che stanno facendo grande l'Asia", “Al cuore dell’Italia. Come Russia e Cina stanno cercando di conquistare il paese” con Valerio Valentini (entrambi per Mondadori), e “Belli da morire. Il lato oscuro del K-pop” (Rizzoli Lizard). È terzo dan di kendo.