Iran nightmare finally over as Kylie Moore-Gilbert comes home

‘Courageous’ Australian academic touched down after her release from Iran where she was serving a ten-year sentence.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert is met by public health officials after disembarking from a government jet at Canberra Airport on Friday and, below, on her release in Iran. Picture: AAP

Kylie Moore-Gilbert has returned to Australia, touching down in Canberra on Friday afternoon, following her release from imprisonment in Iran where she was serving a 10-year sentence on trumped-up espionage charges.

Scott Morrison described Dr Moore-Gilbert this week as an “extraordinarily intelligent, strong and courageous woman” and had warned she was facing a ­further eight years in the Iranian prison system where she was “wrongfully imprisoned” and “wrongfully convicted.”

Academic Moore-Gilbert, who specialises in Middle Eastern politics with a focus on Gulf states. Picture: Department of Foreign Affairs / AFP

“She is an amazing Australian who has gone through an ordeal that we can only imagine,” the Prime Minister said. “I know she will get tremendous support from her friends and family and she will, of course, get tremendous support from the Australian government.”

Her release was part of a carefully orchestrated prisoner-swap deal negotiated behind the scenes with both Tehran and Bangkok.

The arrangement saw three Iranian terrorists, serving sentences for the attempted murder of ­Israeli diplomats, being released by Thailand in exchange for Dr Moore-Gilbert.

Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings said there were “risks” with engaging in prisoner swaps. “We have a problem here because we have no real clarity about what happened,” he said. “If there is a connection here, we are seeing convicted terrorists being released and I think that is a very risky situation, particularly when we have a number of countries — Iran is one and China is second — that are starting to engage in this hostage diplomacy more frequently. I am rather concerned on the face of what looks like a negotiated prisoner swap.

Moore-Gilbert boarding her business class flight back to Australia in Iran. Picture: Iribnews.ir

“It might also leave Tehran thinking that this idea of holding people effectively hostage is something that pays dividends.

“I realise that’s incredibly ­difficult for the families, but we’ve always in Australia taken the view that negotiations of this type were something we would not enter into.”

The government has refused to provide details of how it secured the release of Dr Moore-Gilbert, with the Prime Minister saying it could endanger “other Australians who may … find themselves in this situation”.

The federal government has maintained the need for “quiet ­diplomacy” to secure Dr Moore-Gilbert’s release, despite pressure from her friends and colleagues. The government was also anxious to suppress news that her husband may be an Israeli national.

Wentworth MP Dave Sharma, a former diplomat and ambassador to Israel, said on Friday he was surprised Dr Moore-Gilbert was ever detained by Iranian authorities. The Islamic studies lecturer was arrested at Tehran airport in September 2018 by the ­intelligence arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as she tried to leave the country. She was tried and convicted on espionage and sentenced to 10 years in jail.

She spent time in solitary confinement and was transferred earlier this year to the notorious Qarchak women’s prison, east of Tehran.

“She is a person who is an academic … she was in Iran on a visa at the invitation of an Iranian university to attend a conference,” Mr Sharma told the ABC. “She was detained on her way out, questioned, and then sort of disappeared into a black hole.

“There is a lot we don’t know about what has happened here. It is hard to explain why these things happened to her.”