ROME (AP) — Italy summoned Iran’s ambassador on Thursday to demand the release of an Italian journalist while Tehran demanded Italy free an Iranian citizen arrested on a U.S. warrant over a drone attack in Jordan that killed three Americans a year ago.
The developments reflected an escalation in a sensitive, three-nation diplomatic tangle marked by a series of public barbs.
The complicated saga began on Dec. 16, when the U.S. Justice Department announced charges against two Iranian citizens accused of supplying the drone technology to Iran that was used in a January 2024 attack on a U.S. outpost in Jordan that killed three American troops.
One of the suspects, Mohammad Abedini, was detained that day at Milan’s Malpensa airport on a U.S. warrant seeking his extradition.
Three days later, an Italian reporter for the Il Foglio daily, Cecilia Sala, was detained in Tehran. She had arrived in the country on Dec. 13 on a journalist visa and was arrested on charges of violating the laws of the Islamic Republic, the state-run IRNA news agency said.
The Italian and Iranian governments referred to both cases in their public statements Thursday after the Iranian ambassador was summoned to the Italian foreign ministry. That suggested the cases were very much intertwined as each country seeks the release of its citizen. Both say their detaineed national is being unjustly accused.
The Iranian Embassy to Italy described the meeting between Ambassador Mohammadreza Sabouri and the Italian foreign ministry’s secretary general, Riccardo Guariglia, as friendly.
But in a statement on X, the embassy said Abedini was being held on “false charges” and demanded his release, in what was believed to be Tehran’s first public response to the U.S. case against him.
It insisted that Sala was being treated humanely, especially in light of Christmas and New Year’s holidays, and demanded similar treatment for Abedini.
“It is reciprocally expected from the Italian government that, in addition to expediting the release of the detained Iranian citizen, he will be provided with the things he needs,” the statement said.
U.S. federal prosecutors have charged Abedini and a co-defendant with export control violations after FBI specialists analyzed the drone navigation system used in the Jordan attack and traced it to them. U.S. prosecutors said Abedini's Tehran-based company manufactures navigation systems for the military drone program of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Ever since the 1979 U.S. Embassy crisis in Iran, in which dozens of U.S. hostages spent 444 days in captivity in Tehran, Iran has frequently used prisoners with Western ties as bargaining chips in negotiations.
Italian commentators have speculated that that is indeed the case as Tehran seeks Abedini's release by holding Sala, whose fate has dominated Italian headlines for days and even featured in President Sergio Mattarella’s end-of-year speech to the nation.
The Italian foreign ministry said it summoned Sabouri, the Iranian ambassador, to demand Sala’s release and ensure “dignified detention conditions in full respect of human rights,” including consular access and visitation.
Later in the day, Premier Giorgia Meloni convened a high-level meeting with the Italian justice and foreign ministers to discuss the Sala and Abedini cases, and met separately with Sala’s mother. In a statement, Meloni’s office said the government renewed its call for Sala’s immediate release and “treatment that respects human dignity” in the meantime.
Concerning Abedini, the government reaffirmed that “all are guaranteed equal treatment in compliance with Italian laws and international conventions.”
Abedini’s Italian lawyer, Alfredo De Francesco, had asked the Milan court this week to grant him house arrest. On Thursday, Milan’s general prosecutor Francesca Nanni argued against the request, saying Abedini was a flight risk — especially since the Iranian government owned the residence in Italy that was proposed to house him.
“The circumstances represented in the request, particularly the provision of an apartment and financial support from Iran’s consulate … do not constitute an adequate guarantee against the danger of flight of the Iranian national whose extradition the U.S. has requested,” the adnkronos news agency reported, citing a statement from Nanni that was confirmed by her office.
The U.S. Justice Department has declined to comment on the case.
Sala’s mother, for her part, said she just wants her daughter to come home and be treated humanely by Iran in the meantime.
Speaking to reporters outside of Meloni’s office after the meeting, Elisabetta Vernoni said her daughter had reported to her on Wednesday — their second phone call — that she was sleeping on the floor in a cell usually used to punish prisoners.
“I am a bit like Cecilia, I am a bit of a soldier. I wait and respect the work they are doing,” Vernoni said.
“But prison conditions for a 29-year-old girl who has done nothing must be such that they cannot scar her for life,” she added.
Elisabetta Vernoni, mother of Cecilia Sala an Italian journalist who was detained on Dec. 19 as she was reporting in Iran, leaves Palazzo Chigi after meeting with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, in Rome, Thursday Jan. 2, 2025. (Mauro Scrobogna/LaPresse via AP)
Elisabetta Vernoni, mother of Cecilia Sala an Italian journalist who was detained on Dec. 19 as she was reporting in Iran, leaves Palazzo Chigi after meeting with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, in Rome, Thursday Jan. 2, 2025. (Mauro Scrobogna/LaPresse via AP)
ATLANTA (AP) — Six days of funeral observances for former President Jimmy Carter begin Saturday in Georgia, where he died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100.
The first events reflect Carter’s climb up the political ladder, from the tiny town of Plains, Georgia, to decades on the global stage as a humanitarian and advocate for democracy.
Here is what to know about the initial ceremonies and what happens next:
The proceedings, streamed on apnews.com and the Associated Press YouTube channel, began at 10:15 a.m. EST Saturday with the Carter family arriving at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus.
Former Secret Service agents who protected Carter served as pallbearers, walking alongside the hearse as it exited the campus on its way to Plains.
James Earl Carter Jr. lived more than 80 of his 100 years in and around the town, which still has fewer than 700 people, not much more than when he was born on Oct. 1, 1924. Some other modern presidents — Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton — also grew up in small-town settings, but Carter stands out for returning and remaining in his birthplace for his long post-presidency.
The motorcade moved through downtown Plains, which spans just a few blocks, passing near the girlhood home of first lady Rosalynn Smith Carter, who died in November 2023 at the age of 96, and near where the couple operated the family peanut warehouses. The route also included the old train depot that served as Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign headquarters and the gas station once run by Carter's younger brother Billy.
The motorcade passed by the Methodist church where the Carters married in 1946, and the home where they lived and died. The former president will be buried there alongside Rosalynn.
The Carters built the one-story house, now surrounded by Secret Service fencing, before his first state Senate campaign in 1962 and lived out their lives there with the exception of four years in the Governor's Mansion and four more in the White House.
After going through Plains, the procession stopped in front of Carter's family farm and boyhood home in Archery, just outside the town, after passing the cemetery where the former president's parents, James Earl Carter Sr. and Lillian Carter, are buried.
The farm now is part of the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park. The National Park Service rang the old farm bell 39 times to honor the 39th president.
Carter was the first president born in a hospital. But the home had no electricity or running water when he was born, and he worked his father's land during the Great Depression. Still, the Carters had relative privilege and status. Earl employed Black tenant farming families. The elder Carter also owned a store in Plains and was a local civic and political leader. Lillian was a nurse and she delivered Rosalynn. The property still includes a tennis court Earl had built for the family.
It was Earl's death in 1953 that set Jimmy on course toward the Oval Office. The younger Carters had left Plains after he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. But Jimmy abandoned a promising career as a submarine officer and early participant in the Pentagon's nuclear program to take over the family's peanut business after his father's death. Within a decade, he was elected to the Georgia state Senate.
From Archery, the motorcade headed north to Atlanta. The military-run schedule called for stopping at 3 p.m. outside the Georgia Capitol, where Carter served as a state senator from 1963 to 1967 and governor from 1971 to 1975. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens were set to lead a moment of silence. While former governors are honored with state-run funerals, presidents — even if they served as governors — are memorialized with national rites run by the federal government.
The motorcade then is scheduled to arrive at the Carter Presidential Center at 3:45 p.m., with a private service at 4 p.m. The campus includes Carter’s presidential library and The Carter Center, established by the former president and first lady in 1982.
From 7 p.m. Saturday through 6 a.m. Monday, Carter will lie in repose for the public to pay respects around the clock.
The ceremony is expected to include some of The Carter Center's global staff of 3,000, whose work concentrating on international diplomacy and mediation, election monitoring and fighting disease in the developing world continues to set a standard for what former presidents can accomplish.
Jimmy Carter, who delivered its annual reports until 2019, won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize in part for this post-presidential work. His grandson Jason Carter now chairs the board.
Carter's remains will travel next to Washington, where he will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until his funeral at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral. All the living presidents have been invited, and Joe Biden, a Carter ally, will deliver a eulogy.
The Carter family then will return to bury its patriarch in Plains after a private hometown funeral at 3:45 p.m. at Maranatha Baptist Church, where Carter, a devout evangelical, taught Sunday School for decades.
Carter will be buried afterward in a private graveside service, in a plot visible from the front porch of his home.
People watch as the hearse containing the casket of former President Jimmy Carter passes through Reynolds, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025, en route to Atlanta. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
Former and current U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to the Carter detail, walk with the hearse carrying flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter, at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
A police escort passes as the hearse carrying the flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter approaches during a procession in downtown Plains, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
A person holds signs as the hearse containing the casket of former President Jimmy Carter, pauses at the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm in Archery, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
National Historical Park Superintendent Jill Stuckey and other NPS employees, based out of Sumter County, Ga., salute the hearse carrying former President Jimmy Carter as the motorcade stops in front of the Boyhood Farm, where Carter grew up, Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025, in Plains, Ga. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, Pool)
The hearse containing the casket of former President Jimmy Carter moves toward Plains, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
People line the road before the hearse with the casket of former President Jimmy Carter departs Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
Former and current U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to the Carter detail, walk with the hearse carrying the flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter, at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
Former and current U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to the Carter detail, move the flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter, at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
Former and current U.S. Secret Service agents assigned to the Carter detail, walk with the hearse carrying flag-draped casket of former President Jimmy Carter, at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga., Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
A memorial wreath of cotton bolls is seen at the entrance to the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025, in Archery, Ga. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
A woman looks at items left in tribute to former President Jimmy Carter at the entrance to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024, in Atlanta. Carter died Sunday at he age of 100. (AP Photo/John Bazemore )
A jar of peanuts is among the items left in tribute to former President Jimmy Carter at the entrance to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024, in Atlanta. Carter died Sunday at he age of 100. (AP Photo/John Bazemore )
A woman leaves flowers in tribute to former President Jimmy Carter at the entrance to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024, in Atlanta. Carter died Sunday at he age of 100. (AP Photo/John Bazemore )
A Habitat for Humanity hard hat is among the items left in tribute to former President Jimmy Carter at the entrance to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024, in Atlanta. Carter died Sunday at he age of 100. (AP Photo/John Bazemore )
Tom Chaffin, of Atlanta, leaves flowers at the entrance to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024, in Atlanta. Carter died Sunday at he age of 100. (AP Photo/John Bazemore )
