Press freedom groups are demanding that Iran release Italian journalist Cecilia Sala, who was arrested in Tehran on December 19 and has since been held in solitary confinement inside Tehran’s Evin Prison. Sala, who works for the newspaper Il Foglio and an Italian podcast company, had entered Iran on a regular journalist visa. Just days before her arrest, she filed this report from Tehran.

Cecilia Sala: “I have returned to Iran, the place I most wanted to come back to. Since the last time I was here, many things have changed. One is that hundreds of thousands of women no longer wear the veil, or at least not in the way the law dictates, and they are not afraid of a foreigner like me taking their picture or of the Chinese-made smart cameras scattered throughout the city scanning their faces and sending alerts to the police.”

Iranian authorities have for the first time confirmed the arrest of Cecilia Sala, amid signs they may be angling for a prisoner swap. A day before Sala’s arrest, police in Italy detained a 38-year-old Iranian man accused of working with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, for possible extradition to the United States.