Tehran frees academic in prisoner exchange
Iran freed a jailed British-australian academic yesterday after more than two years’ imprisonment on contested spying charges, in an exchange for three Iranian prisoners held abroad, according to reports. Dr Kylie MooreGilbert, a Melbourne University lecturer, who was arrested in September 2018, was sentenced in a secret trial to 10 years in jail on spying charges that the Australian government maintains were politically motivated.
IRAN freed the jailed British-australian academic Kylie Moore-gilbert yesterday after more than two years’ imprisonment on contested spying charges, in an exchange for three Iranian prisoners held abroad, according to reports.
Dr Moore- Gilbert, a Melbourne University lecturer, was held for 804 days after being arrested in September 2018. In a secret trial, she was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment on spying charges that the Australian government maintains were politically motivated.
“An Iranian businessman and two Iranian citizens who were detained abroad on baseless charges were exchanged for a dual- national spy named Kylie Moore- Gilbert, who worked for the Zionist regime,” said a statement on the website of the Young Journalist Club, a news outlet affiliated to Iranian state television.
Who facilitated the exchange was not immediately clear but the case is likely to reinvigorate debate over Iran’s use of prisoners as bargaining chips.
Footage purporting to show the exchange was broadcast on state television. It shows Dr Moore-gilbert, 33, wearing a grey headscarf and briefly pulling down a surgical mask to show her face. Iranian flags are draped on the three men apparently exchanged, one of whom is a wheelchair-bound double amputee.
Telegram channels affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps identified the men as Saeed Moradi, Mohammad Khazaei and Masoud Sedaghat Zadeh, according to a tweet by Farnaz Fassihi, a correspondent. Two of them had apparently been jailed for terrorism in Thailand over an attempted bomb plot against the Israeli ambassador in 2012.
Mr Moradi, who lost his legs in an explosion after he tried to throw a bomb at police, was given a life sentence, the BBC reported. Mr Khazaei was reportedly sentenced to 15 years in prison for possessing explosives after being arrested at Bangkok airport.
Regime critics accuse Iran of a campaign of state hostage-taking that has seen the Islamic republic detain dozens of dual nationals and foreigners on spying charges.
Tehran denies this and insists that Dr Moore-gilbert, who was arrested after attending a conference in Qom, worked for MI6 and Israeli intelligence.
In letters smuggled out of Evin prison earlier this year, the Cambridgeeducated Islamic studies lecturer wrote that 10 months spent in an isolated wing run by the IRGC had “gravely damaged” her mental health.
She also wrote that she had declined an offer to spy for the Iranian government in return for a reduced sentence.
Iran’s foreign ministry said last December it would not “give in to the political and smear campaigns” over Dr Moore-gilbert’s imprisonment.
Human rights campaigners are now hoping that detained Uk-iranian dual nationals Nazanin Zaghari-ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori could also be freed.
But the Iranian government’s relationship with the UK is much more fraught. Mrs Zaghari-ratcliffe’s release is also reportedly dependent on the UK paying a £450 million debt it has owed Iran since the Seventies for a cancelled arms deal.