Kylie Moore-Gilbert tried singing, meditation and yoga to survive over two years in Iranian prison
Academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert says she sang “terrible 90s pop music” to keep herself sane in the two years she spent behind bars in Iran.
NSW
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Yoga, meditation and singing kept imprisoned Australian Kylie Moore-Gilbert sane during her 804-day stay in an Iranian jail.
The University of Melbourne academic was arrested in Iran’s capital city, Tehran, in September 2018 and held captive on unfounded spying charges.
In her first interview since being freed in November last year, Dr Moore-Gilbert details the brutal ordeal, which included a combined seven months of solitary confinement beginning with four weeks in a tiny, freezing cell with no daylight, constant noise and lights on 24/7 after she was arrested.
She has told Sky News Australia how some activities helped her survive the confinement.
Some nights she would sing to keep herself occupied.
“I would try to do yoga, I would try to meditate, I would sing, sing whatever songs came into my head,” Dr Moore-Gilbert told host Melissa Doyle.
“I‘m a terrible singer, I feel sorry for the other prisoners who were there and having to be subjected to me. I heard from some of them later that they‘d heard me singing in English — you know terrible ‘90s pop music in English for two hours each night to try and entertain my brain.”
Snippets of the exclusive interview reveal Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps tried to recruit Dr Moore-Gilbert as a double agent “many times” before she was finally released.
Dr Moore- Gilbert believes her 10-year jail sentence would have been less if the Australian government had not kept quiet on her arrest at first.
“Had my ordeal been made public, there’s no way I would’ve got 10 years,” she told Sky News.
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