Australia-British academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert was travelling on an Australian passport when she was detained at Tehran airport in 2018 after trying to leave Iran.
Last year she was tried in secret, convicted of espionage charges and sentenced to ten years in prison.
She has been in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran since October 2018.
Last week, the centre for Human Rights in Iran released a series of her handwritten letters in which she talks about her deteriorating health and harsh conditions.
Photo: BBC
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Peter Greste, the UNESCO Chair in Journalism and Communication at the University of Queensland, and a founding director of the Alliance for Journalists' Freedom, says the Australian and British governments need to apply more pressure as the strategy they've been using so far is clearly not working.
Greste was jailed in Egypt for over a year after being arrested in Cairo in December 2013 while working for Al Jazeera.
He told Kathyrn Ryan in her letters, which seem to have been smuggled out of prison, Dr Moore-Gilbert writes of being held in solitary confinement with very poor-quality food. She says her health is in a very serious condition.
“Her psychological health is probably even more serious, the cell that she’s in has a light on, we understand, 24 hours a day, we understand she’s also had very, very limited contact with her family, with her legal representatives and also with consular staff from the Australian embassy.
“We also understand the condition she’s being held in is contrary to Iran’s own law which says that once a prisoner has been convicted they may have to be moved from the Evin prison, which is a temporary holding area under the control of the Revolutionary Guard Core, and into more humane conditions in the regular prison system.”
In a letter written to senior officials in the Iranian government, Moore-Gilbert says that she was handed two sentences; one effectively time-served and one for 10 years.
She indicates the sentence of time-served would be handed down if she agreed to become a spy for Iran, Greste says.
“She unequivocally said there was no way under any circumstances that she would ever work as a spy for any country.”
Greste says the letters are incredibly serious, and as someone who has been through a similar situation he says he can understand what she’s going through.
“It was very painful for me to see those letters because I understand what the psychological pressure that being in solitary confinement places someone under.”
When you have food, shelter and water, the greatest danger in prison is psychological distress, he says.
Greste says it’s understood while Moore-Gilbert was in Iran for a conference she undertook research interviews and it’s believed those people flagged her to the authorities as suspicious.
“That’s when she was arrested. We don’t know what the evidence is, none of that was ever made public, the Iranians say they have the evidence and they’re following due-process and Kylie is guilty of being a spy.”
In the absence of publicly available evidence, Greste says we can assume this is a political case and Iran is holding her hostage to use in bargaining with the West.
The Australian government has been leading the effort to get her released but have not said what exactly it is that they have been doing, he says.
“I know from my own experience that diplomats instinctively prefer to conduct these negotiations quietly with their contacts and they work the room, if you like. They pull whatever levers of influence they feel they might have.”
The problem is that in almost 15 months, this hasn’t helped her situation, he says.
“I think the time has come where we really need to be speaking up more loudly in support of Kylie.”
The Australian government, authorities, diplomats, her family and friends need to speak up and demand her release because public pressure makes a difference, he says.
“It lights a fire under the backsides of the diplomats and the politicians, it keeps them focused on this issue, but it also gives them the capacity to go into negotiations with the Iranians.”