I was being interrogated for 10 hours straight, hooded and with my face to the wall,” says now-freed reporter.

An Italian journalist detained in Iran whose fate became intertwined with that of an Iranian engineer wanted by the United States said she assumed she would have been held much longer and said her boyfriend's contact with Elon Musk might have been "fundamental" to her release.

Italian journalist Cecilia Sala has expressed relief following her release from 21 days of detention in Iran, attributing her swift return partly to a connection with Elon Musk. In a recent interview,