Academic freed from Iran in exchange for 3 Iranians
Kylie Moore-Gilbert from Melbourne had been held in Tehran since 2018
Iran has freed a British-Australian academic who had been detained in the country for more than two years in exchange for three Iranians held abroad, state TV announced.
The television report on Wednesday was scant on detail, saying only that the three Iranians freed in the swap had been imprisoned for trying to bypass sanctions on Iran.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert, 33, was a Melbourne University lecturer on Middle Eastern studies when she was picked up at the Tehran airport as she tried to leave the country after attending an academic conference in 2018. She was sent to Tehran’s Evin prison, convicted of spying and sentenced to 10 years behind bars. Moore-Gilbert had vehemently denied the charges and maintained her innocence.
Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne confirmed the release yesterday, saying Moore-Gilbert would soon be reunited with her family.
“Dr Moore-Gilbert’s release has been an absolute priority for the Government since her detention,” Payne said in a statement. “The Australian Government has consistently rejected the grounds on which the Iranian Government arrested, detained and convicted Dr Moore-
Gilbert. We continue to do so.”
Payne said the release was achieved through “diplomatic engagement” with the Iranian Government and was done in consultation with Moore-Gilbert’s family.
Moore-Gilbert was one of several Westerners held in Iran on widely criticised espionage charges that activists and UN investigators believe is a systematic effort to leverage their imprisonments for money or influence in negotiations with the West, which Tehran denies. Moore-Gilbert wrote in letters to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison that she had been imprisoned “to extort” the Aus
tralian Government.
Her detention had strained relations between Iran and the West at a time of already escalating tensions, which reached a fever pitch earlier this year following the American killing of a top Iranian general in Baghdad and retaliatory Iranian strikes on a U.S. military base.
It was not immediately clear when Moore-Gilbert would arrive in Australia.
State TV aired footage showing her clad in a grey hijab sitting at what appeared to be a greeting room at Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran.
Accompanied by another Western woman in a colourful headscarf, Moore-Gilbert wore a blue mask tucked under her chin and a stoic expression. Later, footage showed Moore-Gilbert being escorted to a large grey van after nightfall.
The state TV report did not elaborate on the Iranians it described as “economic activists” freed in exchange for Moore-Gilbert.
They wore Iranian flags draped over their shoulders, black baseball caps pulled down over their eyes and surgical masks. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, welcomed the three Iranians at the airport. —