30-year-old Italian Alessia Piperno arrested in Tehran

Before they were silenced, Alberto posted a plea for help on Facebook with a recent photo his daughter posted from Tehran, where she had been for nearly three months. “This girl is Alessia Piperno, and she is my daughter,” he wrote Sunday on the now-deleted Facebook post. “Got a call this morning. It was her crying letting us know that she was in prison... She was arrested by police along with her friends while she celebrated her birthday. There were few words but they were desperate. She was asking for help.”