British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert is released by Iran in prisoner swap, two years after she was jailed
- Kylie Moore-Gilbert was sentenced to ten years in Tehran’s Evin Prison in 2018
- She was jailed for espionage and was freed in exchange for three jailed Iranians
- Moore-Gilbert was a Melbourne University lecturer on Middle Eastern studies
Iran has freed British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert who has been detained in Iran for more than two years.
She was released in exchange for three Iranians held abroad, Iranian state broadcaster IRIB reported today.
The state TV report offered no further details Wednesday beyond saying that the three Iranians released in the swap had been detained for trying to bypass sanctions.
Moore-Gilbert was a Melbourne University lecturer on Middle Eastern studies when she was sent to Tehran’s Evin Prison in September 2018 and sentenced to 10 years.
Iran has freed Kylie Moore-Gilbert (pictured), a British-Australian academic who has been detained in Iran for more than two years, in exchange for three Iranians held abroad
State TV aired video showing Moore-Gilbert with a gray hijab sitting at what appeared to be a greeting room at one of Tehran’s airports
She is one of several Westerners held in Iran on internationally criticised espionage charges that their families and rights groups say are unfounded.
It was not immediately clear when Moore-Gilbert would arrive back in Australia.
State TV aired video showing her with a gray hijab sitting at what appeared to be a greeting room at one of Tehran’s airports.
She wore a blue face mask under her chin. The footage showed three men with Iranian flags over their shoulders – those freed in exchange for her being released.
State TV earlier described them as ‘economic activists,’ without elaborating.
Footage showed three men with Iranian flags over their shoulders who were freed in exchange for her being released
Kylie Moore-Gilbert (pictured in 2017), a University of Melbourne scholar on the Middle East, is one of several Westerners held in Iran on internationally criticised espionage charges that their families and rights groups say are unfounded
International pressure on Iran to secure her release has escalated in recent months following reports that her health was deteriorating during long stretches of solitary confinement and that she had been transferred to the notorious Qarchak Prison, east of Tehran.
Moore-Gilbert has gone on hunger strikes and pleaded for the Australian government to do more to free her.
Those pleas included writing to the prime minister that she had been subjected to ‘grievous violations’ of her rights, including psychological torture and solitary confinement.
Her detention has further strained relations between Iran and the West, which reached a fever pitch earlier this year following the American killing of a top Iranian general in Baghdad and retaliatory Iranian strikes on a U.S. military base.