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Iran researcher Kylie Moore-Gilbert released after 800 days of detention

 

It’s the end of a long ordeal for Kylie Moore-Gilbert. The Australian-British researcher, a specialist in the Middle East, was released from Iran on Wednesday, November 25, after more than 800 days of detention. She had been convicted by the Iranian regime for espionage for Israel. His release was accepted by Tehran in exchange for three Iranians. Although relieved to regain freedom, the researcher admitted that her departure from Iran was going to have a “bittersweet” taste, despite the “injustices” suffered.

“I came to Iran as a friend, with good intentions,” she said in a statement issued by the Australian government, in which she also pays tribute to Iranians “warm of heart, generous and brave”. The researcher also hailed in this text the end of a “long and traumatic ordeal”, adding that the support she received in detention “was what mattered most to” her.

An “extremely strong” woman, according to Scott Morrison

Her family and relatives expressed in a statement their immense relief after the first images showing the young woman since her release, broadcast by Iranian state television. According to the footage, Kylie Moore-Gilbert is seen at Tehran airport alongside Australian Ambassador to Iran Lyndall Sach. Australian Prime Minister Sott Morrison, who spoke with the researcher, welcomed the release. “He is an extraordinarily strong, intelligent and courageous person, able to overcome this ordeal,” he told Channel 9 television.

“A businessman and two Iranian citizens detained abroad on false charges were released in exchange for a dual nationality spy working for the Zionist regime,” Iribnews said earlier. Internet state television, giving the name of Kylie Moore-Gilbert. The television gave no further details on the exchange. Iribnews simply posted an uncomplicated video showing three unidentifiable men greeted with honors by Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, along with the few shots of Kylie Moore-Gilbert at the airport.

But according to the Sydney Morning Herald, they are Mohamad Khazaei, Masoud Sedaghat Zadeh and Saeed Moradi. The three men have been imprisoned in Thailand since a failed attempt to assassinate Israeli diplomats in 2012. Moradi lost both legs in the failed explosion, which targeted these diplomats. The arrest of Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a 30-year-old teacher in Islamic studies at the University of Melbourne (Australia), was confirmed in September 2019. According to her family, she had been imprisoned several months earlier.

Sentenced to ten years in prison for espionage

Sentenced to 10 years in prison for intelligence with Israel, the young woman has always denied being a spy. “Good news from Iran is rare,” reacted the human rights organization Amnesty International on Twitter. “It is a huge relief to hear about his release. The Iranian press has written very little about Kylie Moore-Gilbert and the little information available on her comes mainly from the Australian authorities, her family and British or Australian newspapers. According to the British daily The Guardian, she was reportedly arrested in September 2018 at Tehran airport after attending an academic conference in Iran. In letters smuggled out of prison and published in January by the Guardian and the Times, she said she had refused an offer from the Iranians to spy on their behalf.

“I’m not a spy. I have never been a spy, ”she wrote. Feeling “abandoned and forgotten”, Kylie Moore-Gilbert also mentioned in these letters written between June and December 2019 a precarious existence and made of deprivation, without visits or calls, as well as recurring health problems. Signing “an innocent political prisoner”, she asked to be transferred to the general section of women of Evin prison in Tehran, after months in solitary confinement in a small cell permanently lit having “seriously damaged” her health.

In prison with other academics convicted of conspiracy

Finally transferred to this section, she rubbed shoulders with the Franco-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah and the Iranian-British Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Her support committee said at the end of October that she had been transferred to Qarchak women’s prison, reserved for common law prisoners, before being returned to Evine. Detained since June 2019 and sentenced to five years in prison for “collusion with a view to endangering national security” and “propaganda against the political system” of the Islamic Republic – charges that she denies – Fariba Adelkhah is detained in home under the control of an electronic bracelet since early October.

For several months, it has also been the situation of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, threatened with a new trial after being sentenced to five years in prison on a charge of conspiracy against national security, which she denies. Iran, which does not recognize dual nationality, denounces as so many attempts of “unacceptable interference” the calls from Paris to release Fariba Adelkhah and from London to enlarge Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. In recent months, Iran has conducted several prisoner exchanges with countries holding Iranian nationals convicted, awaiting trial or threatened with extradition to the United States.

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