On October 26, 2020 Endangered Scholars Worldwide learned that University lecturer Kylie Moore-Gilbert, jailed in Iran for spying, has been moved from a notorious prison to an unknown location.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a University of Melbourne lecturer and researcher specializing in Middle East politics, has spent more than 700 days in prison. She was detained in August 2018 by the Islamic Republic of Iran and sentenced to 10 years for undisclosed reasons. It was reported her belongings were also moved, but there was no information on where she was taken.
According to BBC Persian, the Australian government has said it holds Iran responsible for Ms Moore-Gilbert's "safety and well-being" and is "urgently seeking access" to her. "Dr Moore-Gilbert's case is one of the Australian government's highest priorities, including for our embassy officials in Tehran," Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said in a statement on Tuesday.
We at Endangered Scholars Worldwide consider Kylie Moore-Gilbert’s detention a flagrant and unjust violation of the freedom, security, and safety of an academic who has been caught up in the political tension between the United Kingdom and Iran—arrested without cause, held for weeks in solitary confinement and without access to a lawyer, and subjected to physical mistreatment and psychological abuse.
Endangered Scholars Worldwide deplores and condemns the ongoing detention, persecution, conviction, and mistreatment of Kylie Moore-Gilbert and calls upon all international organizations, academic and professional associations, and other groups and individuals devoted to the promotion and defense of human rights to strongly protest and condemn this arbitrary incarceration; to ask for her immediate and unconditional release; and to urge the officials of the Iranian government to end the tactic of taking of foreign nationals and dual citizen scholars and students hostage for political gains and to respect, guarantee, and implement the provisions and principles of human rights.
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