Cecilia Sala, what her mother said after the meeting with Giorgia Meloni

”There is a lot of confidence, they are working. I’m a bit like Cecilia, I’m a bit of a soldier“, so Elisabetta Vernoni, mother of Cecilia Sala, after the meeting she had at Palazzo Chigi with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. “The Prime Minister has made a qualitative leap from the understandable reassurances I always receive. She was more precise and punctual and this is what I wanted and this is what I got”, said Vernoni. To journalists who asked her if she was satisfied with the meeting with Giorgia Meloni she replied: “Obviously yes, at this moment”.It’s obvious that yesterday there was a strong change in mood“, he added, alluding to the phone call with his daughter about his prison conditions, “but, yes absolutely”. “I sleep on the floor in the cell and they also took away my glasses”, Cecilia Sala said in the phone call granted to her mother, father and to his partner. He didn’t receive any package: no panettone, no chocolate, no cigarettes, no sweaters, no four books, no mask to protect himself from the neon lights that are on 24 hours a day, no basic necessities.

For this reason, Elisabetta Vernoni’s main concern is Cecilia Sala’s prison conditions. “There are no single cells there, there are detention cells for common prisoners and then punishment cells, let’s say, and you are obviously in one of these: if someone sleeps on the floor, it makes you think that’s the case…” , he told reporters. “The first thing is more dignified conditions of prison life and then important decisions and strength of our country to think about returning to Italy, about which I don’t cry, I don’t cry and I don’t ask for timescales, because they are very particular realities”, he added after the meeting with Prime Minister Giorgia Melons.

“The prison conditions for a 29-year-old girl, who has accomplished nothing, must be those that cannot mark her for life“, he explained. “Then if we think about days or something else… I respect the times they will tell me, but the conditions must be those of not marking a girl who is only an Italian excellence, not only the wine and the cotechini”. Did they tell you anything about the times? “Something – she replied -, but very general things, on which I am certainly awaiting more precise news now”.

The Cecilia Sala case

Sala is accused of violating “the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran”. Having entered Iran with a journalist visa on 14 December, the journalist has been in isolation in Evin prison for 15 days. This afternoon, a summit lasting about an hour was held at Palazzo Chigi on the case. At the table were the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Antonio Tajani, the Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio, the Undersecretary of the Presidency, Alfredo Mantovano and the Italian intelligence. Cecilia Sala’s mother, Elisabetta Vernoni, is meanwhile at Palazzo Chigi to meet Prime Minister Meloni.

During the afternoon, Giorgia Meloni spoke with both of Cecilia Sala’s parents: in addition to the meeting at Palazzo Chigi with her mother, Elisabetta Vernoni, the prime minister also had a telephone conversation with her father Renato Sala.