Freed Academic Speaks of Trauma Behind Bars in Iran

Kylie Moore-Gilbert has said she had suicidal thoughts while being held in solitary confinement as a hostage in Iran.

The British-Australian academic spent 804 days behind bars in the Islamic Republic after being jailed in September 2018 on fabricated spying charges.

During her confinement last summer, she was moved from Evin Prison to the notoriously dangerous and unsanitary Qarchak Prison as punishment for having spoken against being on a prison ward run by the Revolutionary Guards.

Last November Dr. Moore-Gilbert was finally released in exchange for three Iranian nationals as part of a prisoner swap. Now back in her home country, the scholar spoke to Sky News Australia about the trauma she suffered in detention.

“The extreme solitary confinement room [is] designed to break you,” she said. “It’s psychological torture. You go completely insane. It is so damaging.”

While imprisoned, Dr. Moore-Gilbert said she was kept in a small cell in freezing temperatures and was subjected to psychological torture, while being denied phone calls and visitations.

In a letter smuggled out of Evin Prison and published in January 2020, she wrote that she was taking psychiatric medication and the ordeal had “gravely damaged my mental health”.

Speaking to Sky, the former prisoner said: “I felt physical pain from the psychological trauma I had in that room. It’s a two-by-two metre box. There is no toilet. There is no television.

“There were a few times in that early period where I felt broken. I felt, if I have to endure another day of this... If I could, I would just kill myself. But of course, I never tried. I never took that step.”

Just days after her release, the Cambridge-educated academic split from her husband after he allegedly had an affair while he was in prison.

She is now a co-founding member of Hostage Aid Worldwide, a new non-profit set up by former political prisoners and hostages of the Islamic Republic campaigning for an end to the criminal practice by governments.

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