Kylie Moore-Gilbert says Iran asked her to become spy

An Australian academic who spent 804 days in a hellish Iranian prison has revealed the demand her captors made for her freedom.

Freed Australian academic Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert has revealed that Iran asked her to become a spy during her terrifying two-year imprisonment.

The University of Melbourne lecturer in Islamic Studies, who was snatched up as she tried to leave the country following an academic conference in 2018 and put on trial over unfounded claims of espionage, arrived home last year after spending 804 days being subjected to brutal treatment in some of Iran’s most notorious prisons.

Speaking to Sky News Australia in an exclusive interview that will air on Tuesday night, Dr Moore-Gilbert said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps tried to recruit her “many times” before she was released.

“I knew that the reason that they didn’t engage in any meaningful negotiations with the Australians (for my release) was because they wanted to recruit me, they wanted me to work for them as a spy,” she told host Melissa Doyle, who returns to the TV screen for the first time since cutting ties with Channel 7 last year.

“(They said) that if I co-operated with them and agreed to become a spy for them, they would free me. I could win my freedom.”

Kylie Moore-Gilbert was released in November 2020.

Melissa Doyle returns to TV screens for Sky News.

Dr Moore-Gilbert said Iran was trying to “have their cake and eat it too” by getting a hostage release deal and also a double-agent.

“I don’t think they were particularly interested in spying on Australia,” she said.

“They were more interested in me using my academic status as a cover story and travelling to other Middle Eastern countries and perhaps European countries, perhaps America, and collecting information for them there.”

She added that she believed her value to the Iranian authorities gave her some “protection” – even as she was subjected to brutal “psychological torture”, including seven months in solitary confinement.

“I think the Revolutionary Guards had told the prison, ‘If anything happens to this foreign woman, who is of high value to us, then there will be hell to pay,’” she said.

But she explained how she realised that from the moment she was captured on her way to the airport, “the feeling I had in my gut was ‘I am in deep trouble’”.

The 33-year-old told Sky News her torture began immediately after she was detained, with her captors attempting to “break” her with four weeks of solitary confinement in a tiny, freezing cell with constant lights and noise around the clock.

She said the experience plunged her into a “prolonged anxiety attack or panic attack”.

But she said even as the weeks and months dragged on, she repeated her daily mantra. “I am free, no matter what you do to me, I am still free,” she said.

Dr Moore-Gilbert also discussed the betrayal of learning, upon returning home, that her Russian-Israeli husband, Ruslan Hodorov, had allegedly been having an affair with her colleague and PhD supervisor Dr Kylie Baxter.

Her husband’s Israeli ancestry was believed to be one of the reasons she was targeted with spying claims. Mr Hodorov and Dr Baxter campaigned for Dr Moore-Gilbert’s release during her time in prison.

Dr Moore-Gilbert married Mr Hodorov in 2017. She is now expected to file for divorce.

The Sky News special will air on Tuesday at 7pm.