Iran frees Australian teacher in exchange for three Iranians jailed in Thailand

Australian Kylie Moore-Gilbert in one of the images of her release broadcast on Iranian television SalamPix / ABACA / GTRES

Iran has freed Australian university professor Kylie Moore-Gilbert, convicted of alleged espionage for Israel, in exchange for three Iranian nationals who attacked Israeli diplomats in Thailand.

The exchange, reported by Iranian state television on Wednesday night, was confirmed on Thursday by the Canberra government.

"It has been a long and traumatic experience," says the academic, who also has British nationality, in a statement thanking him for the efforts for his release.

Moore-Gilbert, a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne, was detained at Tehran airport on her way back to Australia after participating in a conference in September 2018. She was reportedly denounced by a conference participant for comments that he did during his intervention.

However, her imprisonment was not confirmed until a year later, when she was sentenced to 10 years in prison for "spying for Israel", something the woman has always denied.

Diplomats and rights activists believe that Iran abuses this pretext to imprison Western citizens to exchange for their nationals.

“I leave with a bittersweet feeling despite the injustices I have been subjected to.

I came to Iran as a friend and with good intentions and, when I leave, those feelings not only remain intact, but have been reinforced, "he says in the text in which he thanked for his release.

"It has been a long and traumatic experience," she concedes before stressing that she prefers to remember the support she received while she was detained.

From the little information that has been leaked about his case, it is known that he has spent long periods in an isolation cell and that he carried out several hunger strikes.

Iranian television had aired hours earlier a video without comment showing three unidentified men, one of them in a wheelchair, being greeted by Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

The recording also showed some shots of Moore-Gilbert at Tehran airport, but the time sequence was not clear.

The teacher, who seemed a bit disoriented, was accompanied by the Australian ambassador to Iran, Lyndall Sach.

نخستین تصویر تبادل جاسوس صهیونیستی با سه تاجر ایرانی pic.twitter.com/Y0lEIFLY5J

- باشگاه خبرنگاران جوان |

YJC (@yjc___agency) November 25, 2020

"A businessman and two Iranian citizens detained abroad on false accusations have been released in exchange for a spy with dual nationality who worked for the Zionist regime," announced the network's website before providing the teacher's name.

Although the Iranian media did not give more information about the exchange, the

said in its edition today that the Iranians involved are Mohamad Khazaei, Masoud Sedaghat Zadeh and Saeed Moradi.

All three were imprisoned in Thailand for a failed attack on Israeli diplomats in 2012, in which Moradi lost his legs when the bomb with which they planned to kill them exploded.

Moore-Gilbert, whose age is not listed on his college profile but looks in his early thirties, managed to leak some letters from prison published by British media.

“I am not a spy;

I've never been.

I am an innocent political prisoner, ”she insisted in the letters.

He also recounted that he had rejected an offer from the Iranians to spy for them.

But above all, she said she felt "abandoned and forgotten", without visits or phone calls and with growing health problems.

After months in an isolation cell, she was finally transferred to the general women's section of the Evin prison, where she met with the Franco-Iranian anthropologist Fariba Adelkhah and the British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Both, also accused of violating national security, are currently under house arrest due to the pandemic and controlled with an electronic bracelet.

Iran, which does not recognize dual nationalities, denounces any call for his release as "unacceptable interference".

At the same time that Moore-Gilbert was released, a court upheld the death penalty against the Swedish-Iranian doctor Ahmadreza Djalali, detained during a visit to his home country in 2016. The doctor, who reportedly refused to spy for the Islamic regime, He was accused of "corruption on earth", a figure of Islamic law

that is difficult to translate, which is usually applied to those who threaten social and political peace.

At least a dozen foreign or Iranian citizens with dual nationality are in detention in the Islamic Republic, despite the trickle of releases and exchanges in recent years.

Human rights groups accuse Tehran of using their cases to obtain concessions from other countries.