MESA is pleased to report that Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert was released from prison on November 25, 2020 after 804 days' detention in Iran, and has returned to Australia. Dr. Moore-Gilbert, about whom MESA wrote on 19 May 2020 and 5 August 2020 to express concern for her safety and wellbeing, was detained in Iran in 2018 on charges of alleged espionage and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment after a secret trial. An Early-Career Academic Fellow and University Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne, Dr. Moore-Gilbert spent months in solitary confinement in the high security unit of the Revolutionary Guards’ own prison within Evin, Ward 2A, and in August 2020 was transferred to Qarchak, a remote desert facility that has been labeled ‘the worst prison in the world for women.’ The Iranian authorities failed to produce any evidence to support the charges of allegation against Dr. Moore-Gilbert, who had been attending an academic conference in Iran with official invitation before she was arrested.
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