Jailed Australian Kylie Moore-Gilbert prepares to welcome baby boy with comedian Sami Shah

In 2018, Kylie Moore-Gilbert was in an Irani jail, falsely accused of espionage, with no hope of getting out for a decade. Today, life could not be more different for her. Watch her wide-ranging High Steaks interview.

Trapped in an Iranian jail Kylie Moore-Gilbert, then 32, thought she might never get to be a mother.

But now she is just months away from welcoming her second child – a baby boy.

A decade long sentence on false espionage charges would mean she would have been in her 40s by the time she could return to Australia.

As an academic, Moore-Gilbert had gone to Iran to continue her research into Shia communities but after being arrested at the airport on her way home, returning to her old life in Australia seemed impossible.

“I knew I wanted to have kids when I was in prison,” she tells the Sunday Telegraph over lunch at The Stunned Mullet in Port Macquarie.

“I spent a lot of time in prison thinking about these big questions.

“It was a source of great angst to me that I had this 10 year prison sentence and I could potentially be 41-years-old by the time I was released from prison and maybe I’d never have that opportunity to have a family.”

After a childhood spanning Gosford and Bathurst, Moore-Gilbert now lives in Melbourne. She’s in Port Macquarie to meet her 100-year-old grandmother and local icon Marjorie Cameron OAM – a trip she made all through her childhood and most of her life.

Five years on from her release – after serving two years and three months – she reveals she and her partner, comedian Sami Shah, are expecting a baby boy in October.

It’ll be their second child together after two-year-old Leah, and Shah’s third after his daughter Anya, 16, from a previous marriage.

As she reflects on life over the past five years, which included a divorce after her husband had an affair with her colleague while she was in prison, she feels gratitude.

“I never expected at the time to find someone (Shah) so quickly,” she says.

“I’m really, really fortunate and, you know, maybe the universe owed me a round of good luck.”

Kylie Moore-Gilbert is expecting her second child. Picture: Lindsay Moller

Moore-Gilbert survived under Iran’s brutal regime but the task of “two-under-three” is still daunting for the academic and advocate.

“I don’t know how I’m going to surviv e those first few months but fingers’ crossed,” she says as she tucked into a hanger steak, served well-done to accommodate her pregnancy.

Another daunting task is raising a boy in today’s environment where male influencers like alleged rapist Andrew Tate share deeply misogynistic views online.

Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert with reporter Angira Bharadwaj during their High Steaks interview . Picture: Lindsay Moller

Moore-Gilbert said she and Shah, a proud girl-dad and feminist, are excited to meet their little boy but are mindful of raising a son in the era of Tate and the “manosphere” — a rapidly spreading online community where women are degraded.

The pair found out they were having a son around the same time streaming giant Netflix released its haunting drama Adolescence, which centres on a teenage boy being radicalised on the internet before he stabs a female classmate to death.

She said she can’t bring herself to watch the show.

“Sami is quite a feminist dad and is very open minded and having gender equality is important to him,” she said.

“I think the way you bring up your son really matters and so if you give them those values and you equip them with tools to tackle some of the more male specific challenges, hopefully they’ll be OK.”

Kylie Moore-Gilbert with her partner comedian Sami Shah. Instagram

Kylie Moore-Gilbert and Sami Shah share a daughter, Leah. Instagram

Besides the dangers online, Moore-Gilbert agrees the state of the world more broadly is equally frightening with tensions rising in the Middle East and no end to the war in Ukraine.

Moore-Gilbert runs Australian Wrongful and Arbitrary Detention Alliance with Cheng Lei, a Chinese Australian journalist held for years in a Chinese prison, and Sean Turnell, an Australian economist kept captive in Myanmar for 650 days by its government.

“It’s a bizarre little club,” she says of their friendship and advocacy work together. Nobody else can understand.”

Kylie Moore-Gilbert with Sean Turnell and Cheng Lei. Instagram

The trio found support with each other after their own wrongful detentions and are working to support others like them including cases that have not been made public.

Recent turmoil in the Middle East, including the Iranian jail in which Moore-Gilbert had been held being bombed during Iran and Israel’s 12 day war, has brought back memories of her 804 days in captivity from 2018 to 2020.

“It was really full on period, those 12 days or up to two weeks,” she said.

“I think I over-estimated my ability to field the media requests and cope with it on an emotional level especially because on the final day of the war, Evin Prison got bombed.

“There were buildings and places that I had stepped into myself and people that I knew in that prison.”

Moore-Gilbert says in an increasingly fragmented world, it’s likely that more people could be falsely imprisoned like her.

She holds particular concerns for dual nationals who can be jailed in their other country, leaving Australian authorities fewer options on how to bring them back.

An image grab from footage obtained from Iranian State TV IRIB on November 25, 2020, shows Australian-British academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who was serving a 10-year prison sentence for spying, during her release in Iran.

“I think it’s a natural conclusion to draw that there will be more, that there will be an uptick in cases,” she said.

“I think we are already seeing it. It’s not just affecting Australian citizens but citizens in most western democracies.”

Despite her experience in Iran, Moore-Gilbert reveals she still has a lot of love for people in the country and has been embraced by the Iranian community in Australia.

Today, she keeps her ­connection to the country alive by indulging in Persian cuisine with Shah, including Tachin, a Persian saffron rice.

“I have many friends in Iran and I was constantly checking up on them (during the 12 day war) and making sure they are okay and they have evacuated from Tehran,” she says.

“Seeing the images of the administrative building, the gates, the judicial buildings … it was just sort of staggering to me.”

Moore-Gilbert believes US President Donald Trump made the right decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities but stability in the region would depend on Iran’s co-operation on its nuclear facilities.

“What matters is Iran’s willingness, or otherwise, to enter into some kind of negotiated agreement over the nuclear program,” she said.

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Originally published as Jailed Australian Kylie Moore-Gilbert prepares to welcome baby boy with comedian Sami Shah