Australian Academic Recounts Her Ordeal In Iranian Prisons

Kylie Moore-Gilbert, academic previously jailed in Iran for over two years, has recounted her harrowing ordeal in the Islamic Republic’s prisons.

In her latest book published earlier in April, titled ‘The Uncaged Sky: My 804 days in an Iranian prison’ the Australian-British expert on Islamic studies detailed her daily struggle to survive her incarceration.

Having spent time in two of the most notorious Iranian prisons -- Evin and Qarchak – she tells the readers how she was pushed to the limit of her endurance by extreme physical and psychological deprivation as she was held in a filthy solitary confinement cell for months, and subjected to relentless interrogation.

She narrated how she began adopting a strategy of resistance against her captors through multiple hunger strikes, letters smuggled to the media, and coordinated protests with other prisoners, as well as an escape attempt that led to her transfer to the isolated desert prison Qarchak.

She was arrested at Tehran Airport by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on September 12, 2018, was convicted of espionage in a closed-door trial, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Moore-Gilbert, who is a lecturer in Islamic Studies at Melbourne University, was released in November 2020 in a prisoner swap with three Iranian prisoners in Thailand, two of whom had been convicted in connection with a bombing plot in Bangkok in 2012.