When Kylie Moore-Gilbert arrived at Tehran airport for her flight home to Australia in September 2018, she would have had no idea of the traumatic 804 days that lay ahead of her.
The University of Melbourne academic, who had been in Iran to attend a conference, was arrested at the airport and accused of spying for Israel. She was found guilty of espionage charges, sentenced to 10 years in jail and only freed this week after a concerted diplomatic effort by the Australian government. For the first year of Moore-Gilbert’s imprisonment, no one even knew where she was.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has made clear that there was never any substance to the claims Moore-Gilbert was a spy. The brutal truth is this Australian found herself a pawn caught in a high-stakes diplomatic game between Iran and the Western world.
And while her release brings relief to her family, the government and all Australians, it only emboldens Iran to seize more Western hostages and use them as bargaining chips for its own political purposes. It makes travel to Iran for any Australian a dangerous prospect, one that can compromise the government and potentially unshackle terrorists who would have otherwise stayed behind bars.
Read the editorial in The Sydney Morning Herald.