Sydney, Mar 10, 2021 (AFP) – Australian-British university professor Kylie Moore-Gilbert, released after two years in detention in Iran for espionage, declared on Tuesday that Tehran tried to recruit her as a spy in exchange for her release.
In her first interview since returning to Australia in November, Middle East specialist Kylie Moore-Gilbert said that Iranian authorities asked her “several times” to spy for them.
Arrested in 2018, she was charged with espionage and sentenced to 10 years in prison. She has always denied the charges.
“I knew the reason they did not enter into meaningful negotiations with the Australians was that they wanted to recruit me. They wanted me to work for them as a spy,” he told Sky News Australia on Tuesday.
Moore-Gilbert also said that she was beaten during detention and that the seven months she spent in isolation was “psychological torture.”
“It is very harmful. I would say that I felt physical pain due to the psychological trauma suffered in that room.”
“It is a room measuring two by two meters, without a toilet, without a television, there is absolutely nothing,” he explained.
She claims to have felt “broken” by this incarceration and that she had suicidal thoughts.
“I had the feeling that if I had to endure this one more day, if I could, I would kill myself. But of course, I never tried and I never took that step,” he said.
Moore-Gilbert also criticized the way the Australian government has handled the case, keeping quiet while negotiating behind the scenes for his release.
“I believe that if my ordeal had been made public, it would not have been possible for me to be sentenced to ten years,” he declared.
“But there were no lights, there was no attention … and there was no one to hold them accountable.”
Moore-Gilbert estimates that his health condition attracted “more attention” when his arrest was covered in the press.
She was detained in 2018 by the Guardians of the Revolution, the ideological armed wing of the Islamic Republic, after having attended a conference in Qom, central Iran.
She was released in exchange for three Iranians accused of being involved in an alleged plot against Israeli diplomats.
hr / dm / qan / juf / ob / erl / lda
AFP
