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Kylie Moore-Gilbert is allowed to leave Iran, the pictures come from Iranian state television
Photo: IRIB HANDOUT / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock
An Australian-British researcher has been released after two years in prison in Tehran in exchange for three Iranian citizens.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who was sentenced to ten years in prison for alleged spying on behalf of Israel in Tehran, was released Wednesday evening.
The 33-year-old Islamic scholar had always denied the allegations.
She called her time in detention a "long and traumatic ordeal" in a statement distributed by the Australian government on Thursday.
According to the Iranian broadcaster Iribnews, three Iranian citizens who were arrested abroad were released "in exchange for a spy with dual citizenship".
The contribution showed pictures of three men who were greeted when they returned home.
According to reports from the Sydney Morning Herald and the AP news agency, three men arrested in Thailand who attempted to carry out an attack on Israeli diplomats in 2012.
Moore-Gilbert smuggled letters out of prison
The Iranian authorities had confirmed the arrest of the Islamic scholar Moore-Gilbert from the University of Melbourne in September 2019.
According to her family, she was arrested in 2018.
Moore-Gilbert had letters smuggled out of prison during her imprisonment, some of which had been published in the British media.
The first ten months of her imprisonment in an isolated wing of Evin Prison in Tehran "severely damaged" her mental health, she wrote.
Nevertheless, she had turned down an offer from Tehran to work as a spy for Iran.
It was "bittersweet" to leave Iran, despite the "injustices" that had happened to her.
She went to the country as a "friend and with friendly intentions."
She thanked the Australian government, and especially the diplomats in the Iranian embassy in Tehran, who "have worked tirelessly for my release for two years and three months."
British Foreign Minister Raab calls for the release of all Britons
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison stressed Thursday that his country had not released any prisoners.
Like Morrison, the US and UK welcomed the release.
The British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab asked Tehran in the short message service Twitter to release all British dual nationals.
The US State Department said Moore-Gilbert should never have been arrested.
Tehran is operating a "hostage diplomacy".
Another prominent case is Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
The Iranian-British employee of a British journalists' foundation was temporarily allowed to leave the prison because of the coronavirus pandemic.
At the beginning of August, the German-Iranian opposition leader Jamshid Sharmahd was abducted by the mullah regime and charged with terrorism.
(Read an interview with his daughter here.)
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height / AFP / AP