Jailed Australian Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert claims Iranian authorities tried to recruit her as spy
Melbourne academic Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who is locked up in an Iranian hellhole, has claimed in shocking new letters that authorities tried to recruit her as a spy and taunted her.
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Australian academic Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert has claimed that Iran had tried to recruit her as a spy and taunted her with “an awful game” that “gravely damaged” her mental health.
New letters smuggled out of Tehran’s notorious Evin prison have revealed the depths of despair that the University of Melbourne Islamic studies lecturer has endured.
Dr Moore-Gilbert, who pleaded with Prime Minister Scott Morrison for help in a letter first reported by News Corp Australia on Christmas Eve detailing a hunger strike, wrote that she felt “alone”.
She has been sentenced to 10 years’ jail on spying charges in Iran after she was arrested when she was boarding a flight back to Australia following a university conference in 2018.
The new series of letters, which were addressed to a prosecutor, and two officers in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, reveal she was taunted with two conflicting sentences.
“Today (November 27) I was shown two different appeal decisions: one indicating a 13 months sentence, and the other confirming my initial verdict of 10 years imprisonment. My case manager said that the 13-months decision was “fake”,” she wrote.
“How is it possible for this to have been “fabricated”, and how is it possible that two very different appeal decisions were delivered to “2-A” detention center?!”
The letters also claim that she was offered the chance to be a spy for Iran, which she rejected.
“I am not a spy. I have never been a spy and I have no interest to work for a spying organization in any country,” she wrote.
Much of Dr Moore-Gilbert’s sentence has been spent in solitary confinement in a 2m by 3m cell.
Dr Moore-Gilbert also complains in the letters that she did not have money in her account for medicine and food.
“Every time that a shopping request list is given to my cell I never have enough money in my account, because my embassy never transfer me enough money,” she wrote on September 18 last year.
“This has been a consistent problem, even as early as my first meeting with the Australian ambassador 9 months ago.
“I have food allergies and I cannot eat most of the food coming out of the “A-2” ward kitchen.”
Prisoners are usually allowed to have money deposited into their account by family members, however she has had nothing, a source said.
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Dr Moore-Gilbert wrote in a letter in August, which was written in Farsi and translated, that she was struggling.
“In the past month I have been to the special care at ‘Baghiatollah Hospital’ twice and the prison infirmary six times,” the letter said.
“I think I am in the midst of a serious psychological problem.”
Dr Moore-Gilbert has done at least five hunger strikes, with her Christmas Eve fast lasting more than a week.
Originally published as Jailed Australian Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert claims Iranian authorities tried to recruit her as spy