
This post deals with suicide ideation and might be triggering for some readers.
After 804 days in Iran's notorious prisons, British-Australian academic Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert was reunited with her family in Australia.
She had been beaten, tortured and drugged over the two-year period, dealt with suicide ideation and considered escaping into the wilderness of a country where she did not understand anyone. But speaking to Sky News in her first interview since arriving back in Australia in November 2020, Moore-Gilbert said a betrayal she discovered when she returned was harder than it all.
Moore-Gilbert was a lecturer on Middle Eastern studies at the University of Melbourne's Asia Institute when she was arrested at a Tehran airport while trying to leave the country after a conference in 2018.
Watch: The trailer for Kylie Moore-Gilbert's Sky News interview. Post continues below video.
She was sent to Evin prison, convicted of spying and sentenced to 10 years behind bars. No evidence of Moore-Gilbert's alleged crimes has ever been publicly presented, and she has vehemently denied the charges and maintained her innocence.
Moore-Gilbert explained the "psychological torture" she faced when kept in solitary confinement - in a small, freezing cell with constant noise - which she believed was the Iranian government trying to "break her".
"It's psychological torture. You go completely insane. It is so damaging," she said.
"I felt physical pain from the psychological trauma I had in that room. It is a two-by-two metre box… there is no toilet, there is no television," she said.
"I felt if I have to endure another day of this, you know, if I could I would just kill myself. But of course I never tried and I never took that step."
Image: AAP.