SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: Australian woman survives 804 days of prison in Iran

[Applause] it doesn't feel like my life i feel like it it is somebody else's story it's psychological torture you go completely insane it is so damaging i felt if i have to endure another day of this if i could i'd just kill myself he stopped telling me he loved me over the phone who told you that he was having an affair [Music] hi welcome hi another seat [Music] thanks [Music] hi how are you feeling i'm okay all things considered i'm feeling pretty good i've been pretty positive comfortable yes are you ready to tell me all about everything that happened as ready as i think i'll ever be because obviously i'm quite mindful of you know an interview when you've been through so much that you're in a place that you're happy to talk about things i am i actually think it's quite therapeutic to talk um i want to talk about what happened to me [Music] [Applause] a young hailey growing up a country girl you grew up in bathurst in country new south wales what sparked your interest in the middle east it wasn't sort of an immediate sparking of interest where suddenly i woke up one day and decided i wanted to research the middle east growing up in the country i wanted to get out of my country town as soon as possible when i was in high school so i left bathurst when i was 18 years old did the typical thing that aussie teenagers do after school and went backpacking moved to europe travelled around europe traveled around some other places like india china and the middle east and i really fell in love with the middle east did you always feel comfortable when you were traveling in the middle east as a teenager at that point um you know i wasn't alone the first time i went to the middle east it was with my sister and a friend from new zealand and um so you know we were young we were carefree we weren't too worried about the risks i decided instead of coming back to australia i would study in the uk and i got accepted into a fantastic program at cambridge called middle eastern studies so university at cambridge then you've come back to australia to do your phd in melbourne at melbourne university yes i have always been a bit of a nerd i've always loved to study i've always loved writing and researching and even from school it was always something i was interested in so fast forward to 2018 and you travel overseas to attend a conference what was the conference about [Music] it was more of a seminar so it was to learn more about shia islam the sect of islam which is the majority religion in iran and in a couple of arab countries and um i'd always wanted to visit iran and i thought it was a great opportunity were you excited yes i was yes i'm always excited anytime i travel to the middle east [Music] it's a beautiful country with amazing history amazing heritage welcoming hospitable people this wonderful country did you feel safe did you have any doubts prior to my departure yeah i did have some doubts i mean obviously i wasn't thinking i would be arrested or i would have false accusations of espionage attached to my you know very innocuous um academic research project but anytime you go to somewhere volatile like the middle east obviously you have to think if this happens to me if that happens to me what am i gonna do so that stuff was going through my mind but i certainly never imagined something like this would happen to me i read somewhere you were a guest of the iranian government traveling is that because there's a lot of stuff as you can imagine floating around and because we've never heard from you until now yeah we don't know what's true and what isn't no i wasn't a guest of the iranian government in that the iranian government didn't invite me or anything um i was invited by the university um the university of religion said to nominations in hom i was invited by them to attend the seminar so they contacted me it wasn't that i contacted them you then decided to extend your trip so when the seminar finished how long were you staying on for not too much well maybe a week and a half i think not too long and why did you decide to stay longer i just wanted to see a bit more of iran and um there were a few people i wanted to meet bahrainis living in iran to interview for my research um so i thought extending my trip by a week and a half would give me the opportunity to conduct some research interviews and to just experience the country you know i didn't know if i'd be back it's september 2018 when you head to the airport to fly home how did it all unfold i'd arrived i checked in for my emirates flight and the the man who checked me in took my two bags off the carousel and i said what are you doing why are you taking my bags off and and he wouldn't look at me and he you know in retrospect his behavior was was suspicious and um a group of people came up to me and and stopped me and told me they had a warrant for my arrest and i needed to come with them so were they in uniform no they didn't show me a license a badge anything they showed me a print out in farsi claiming this was an order from a judge for my arrest and i said well what do you mean my arrest i haven't done anything and what is this i don't understand farsi you know can someone translate this for me it could be anything and i said what do you mean come with you where am i going what do you want from me and they said madam you must come with us now. and there was a female guard there who sort of grabbed my elbow and we walked off what are you thinking at this point is it this has got to be wrong this is all going to be rectified in a moment this can't be right or did it dawn on you what was happening no um i thought okay well they're gonna ask me a few questions and then they'll let me catch my flight you know i remember saying to them after about 15 minutes how long is this going to take because you know my flight's leaving in an hour and a half and they kind of laughed at me and said madam you're not getting on that flight and i said what do you mean and they said you're not catching that plane and then i started to cry because it that's when it began to dawn on me that this was serious and this wasn't just a few cursory questions in the airport for security reasons but that these people might genuinely want to arrest me that moment when it goes from confusion to terror i mean i i had been nervous that day and the day prior that something wasn't right the receptionist in my hotel had pulled me aside and said kylie some men have come here asking about you and i said what do you mean which what type of men who are these people he said they're very bad men and then when i pushed him to tell me who they were exactly he kind of clammed up and became nervous i felt okay i don't know who these men are and what they want but it's probably for the best that i'm leaving and i couldn't believe that this was happening to me and it was i just thought it's just a big misunderstanding they're going to realize that i've done nothing wrong they're going to realize that i'm just an academic researcher you were essentially dubbed in by somebody do you know who dubbed you in i do for me it's very confusing i don't know exactly why he did what he did i would like to know but i probably never will it's either because he was working for the revolutionary guards from the beginning and flagged me suspicious or he was arrested by them after i had interviewed him he was an interview subject of mine a bahraini and possibly he was arrested they went through his phone found messages from me on his phone and obviously asked who's this foreign woman you've been meeting up with and then he cut a deal with them to get out of whatever legal trouble he was in by helping to entrap me and um and working with them to arrest me so for anyone who doesn't understand you know who they are and what they do so there's the separate iranian army isn't there and then there's this revolutionary guard yes so do they run almost independently are they almost a law unto themselves they are yes they're a state within a state for sure are they notorious for being heavy-handed are they frightening um i think they have a frightening reputation [Music] [Music] you're at the airport you are bundled up by this group of intimidating revolutionary guards i'm only beginning to fathom how terrifying you would how terrified you'd feel what happened where did they take you what was what was next um so i was interrogated or interviewed in the airport for several hours then they were telling me they're taking me to a prison i i guess at this point nothing sank in i didn't know what was going on i didn't really think i was going to prison i thought why would i go to prison i've done nothing wrong i mean it just seemed ludicrous to me [Music] rather than take me to prison they took me first to a safe house in north tehran where i was interrogated overnight until about i think 10 am the next day you're in a house you don't know where you are how many were there how many guards were they male i mean what was their demeanor what were they doing and saying and there was a large group of men i don't know how many maybe between 10 and 15. um i didn't see half of them though they were all in other rooms some of them were interrogators others i think were going through my emails then um at around midday the next day they'd checked me into a hotel which was clearly under their control but it was also functioning as a regular hotel and had regular guests did they let you make a phone call were you able to call anyone were you able to speak to anyone other than the unknown man in this room no um all of my electronic devices were taken away from me from the very beginning in the airport they did let me send a message on whatsapp to my family saying i'm not coming back from iran tonight because i'd missed my flight but the way that i phrased it it was clear it wasn't coming from me you know i deliberately used clunky um formal language in english that and they knew i was at the airport i'd message my family from the airport before checking in saying i've i've arrived at the airport i'm about to take my flight um so i believe it was clear to my family from that moment that something had happened who did you send that message to uh my parents and my husband how long were you there for uh around a week in this hotel um i was told i can't leave the hotel room um so i was basically imprisoned inside this hotel room and they would come to the hotel room to interrogate me each day did they hurt you um no not at this point no um they said we're moving you to another location don't worry we're just taking you to a different hotel or a different apartment and i said you're taking me to prison aren't you and they said no no we're not no we're just moving into somewhere else but at this point the feeling i had in my gut was i'm in deep trouble they put a mask over my face i wasn't allowed to see where we were driving and you know i got very carsick because we're winding our way through tehran traffic i can't see anything on where we're going and i think it was about a half hour journey to evan [Music] i'd heard of evian because of its sort of notorious reputation prior to the revolution for torture and it's it's famous as the prison for political prisoners i didn't know where i was i didn't know it was evan it was only other prisoners later on inside the ward i was in that told me no you're in evan at that point it really sunk in you know i am getting admitted to prison and what on earth is going to happen to me and i was so confused because i didn't understand the language i didn't understand why i didn't understand what i was being charged with who these men were where i was going um i was afraid they would torture me i was afraid they would rape me so i didn't feel safe and i was just yeah i was really scared and really confused [Applause] i was put in a car and driven to the do aleph unit 2a which is controlled by the revolutionary guard so it's a prison within a prison it's a detention unit for revolutionary guards arrested security and political prisoners i guess at that time if if you had asked me where do i think i'm going i guess i would have thought i'm going to a proper prison you know where there are other inmates and you sleep in bunk beds or something and you know you have roommates but no i was thrown into solitary confinement um in this max security detention center controlled by the revolutionary guards and it's essentially a black hole it's a black site it's outside the scope or the control of any other organization other than the rgs how long were you in there almost two years in this prison within a prison yes i was arrested and held there for yeah 23 months [Music] are you able to describe it for me i mean you're in solitary confinement how big's the room what does it look like and sounds and smells and can you describe it for me sure so i was in many different rooms but the first room i was put in i would say is the extreme solitary confinement room designed to break you it's psychological torture you go completely insane um it is so damaging i would say i felt physical pain from the the psychological trauma i had in that room it's a two by two meter box there is no toilet there is no television there is nothing whatsoever other than a phone on the wall for calling the guards there's no window um there had been a window in my room and it had been boarded up with a piece of sheet metal so i could hear some sounds from outside and sometimes i had a kind of a sliver of light coming through a crack in the sheet metal and reflecting on the wall opposite so i could tell when the sun was out i could tell when it was dawn and dusk because there were birds in the trees outside um and they would tweet in the morning and in the evening but other than that the light was on 24 7. there was no real way of knowing the time um you could i'm fairly tall and i could only just stretch out on the floor without my head and my feet touching the wall on either side there was a carpet kind of an old dirty stained carpet and that was all i had three blankets they were old they were itchy they were kind of military blankets full of other people's hairs full of goodness what bit bits of skin bits of rubbish they were they smelled bad they were really itchy i had to use one as a pillow one as a mattress and one to cover myself so i wouldn't be cold yet i was still cold you know i spent four weeks in that room after the two-week mark i i was flipping out completely i'd lost it i'd lost a plot i was completely crazy um just entertaining your brain for such a long period of time they wouldn't come every day for interrogation toward the end so i'd have days and days every weekend as well where i was just alone in this room locked in a room 23 hours a day with nothing to do so i was by the end of it a crazy lady my god yeah how do you know did you mark the time how did you know that one day where was a new day i mean did you do anything to what do you do with your mind i i found a piece of rock in the outdoor exercise area and um we were taken outside for half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening so i found a little rock there and i'd used it to scratch into the soft blaster of the wall um a line for each day i'd been there this box tiny tiny little box that you were thrown into the lights are on all the time could you sleep you know i didn't sleep very much the first few nights i couldn't eat anything and i couldn't sleep my emotional state was just so [Music] volatile and i was so anxious you know my heart was beating fast i was breathing heavily i was basically having a prolonged anxiety attack or a panic attack i was crying um you know i certainly couldn't sleep but um after a while i did get used to sleeping with the lights on there was also a noise coming from the phone i don't know whether it was deliberate or not maybe the phone was broken or maybe it was some sort of um static interference noise that was designed to disturb you so there was just this constant hum this constant static sound coming out of the phone 24 hours a day and either it was part of the psychological torture or the phone was just broken but um that really disturbed me as well so having that constant noise and the light on 24 7 it was challenging [Music] it took me a while to adjust but once i did i felt like i slowed my brain down and i could exist you know by the three and four week mark in that room i was sort of existing in a half asleep half awake state where i would sort of drift in and out of my memories and drift in and out of various ideas in my head and just stare at the wall for hours and past the time in this lethargic state almost like a form of meditation so i managed to slow my brain down and just not think about anything and stop feeling anything dulling my emotions dulling my thought processes trying to escape my individuality as a human being and just exist on instinct alone did they break your spirit there were a few times in that early period that i felt broken i felt if i have to endure another day of this you know if i could i'd just kill myself but of course i never tried and i never i never took that step i don't know whether i really wanted to or if it was just everything was just too too much to bear if i could knock myself out if i could just take some drug that would knock me out and you know have me sleep 24 hours a day or something i would have taken it straight away but after a few weeks i started to get angry angry about what i was being subjected to angry about the fact that i'd done nothing wrong and here i was being psychologically tortured and being accused of all sorts of ridiculous crimes and all sorts of ridiculous things in these interrogations and that anger woke up my emotional side again and gave me strength i drew strength from from my anger and indignation at what had happened to me and became stubborn and started to fight back and started to break the rules because i thought i don't deserve this who are these people who do this to me so i did have a moment after a few weeks in that solitary confinement cell where i managed to channel my anger into strength and um and i wasn't broken after that [Applause] you're in this first box for four weeks where did you go after that what happened after a month i was moved into a slightly bigger room so three metres by two meters or two and a half meters and it had a squatter toilet and a television and i was still alone and i spent maybe another month there alone um but at least i didn't have to put on a mask and have the guard escort me to the toilet i could go to the toilet in the middle of the night and i had a tv which was only of limited use to me because i didn't understand farsi [Music] and at this point the tv was locked on one channel only we didn't have a remote it was um the ifilm channel which is persian language cereal soap operas and without fail from 8 30 in the morning until 10 o'clock at night this one channel would be started up on my tv remotely by the guards and i couldn't change the volume i couldn't mute it i couldn't turn it off couldn't change the channel and these cereals would be repeated two sometimes three times a day the same episode all in a language i didn't understand and for me it was almost a form of torture in and of itself you know even though the tv was there to entertain me and it was supposed to be better to be there with the tv i just remember so many times like lying and covering my head with a blanket and trying to block out the noise of this foreign language and trying to sleep trying to get a nap in the middle of the day and not being able to because of this damn tv when was your trial and where was it my trial started um in june 2019. so i was arrested in september and from september till june i'd been waiting once interrogation's finished i had nothing to do i was just waiting in my cell every day for some sort of outcome whether that be a diplomatic solution or me going to court i didn't know and um i was taken to the court and some of my interrogators were there the judge the representative of the prosecutor my lawyer whom i didn't know and wasn't allowed to speak with um all of the discussions that were happening in farsi in the court nothing was translated for me so i was just sitting there in this chair in the middle of the room with sort of a ring around me of revolutionary guards and other people and this judge and prosecutor sitting at a bench in front of me much higher up and i was there for several hours answered some of the judge's questions then was told okay we're done and i have to go back to the prison there was no outcome from that court i didn't have a clue what was going on you seem so composed how you talk about it you are it's like you're talking about someone else it feels like it happened to someone else it doesn't feel like my life you always think this stuff will never happen to me you know if you see stories on the news about aussies in trouble overseas you think that gosh that's horrible but it won't happen to me these things don't happen to ordinary people like me um so yeah i feel a bit detached from it still i feel like it it is somebody else's story um maybe i haven't properly processed it all yet you said that you were doing some things when you were in prison naughty things to try to you know get yourself put into the public system so two things one that says to me that you just knew that you were going to stay you knew that you were going to be found guilty and stay in jail so does that mean at that point you gave up any hope that you would be released um i had hope i would be released with the assistance of the australian government because everybody told me all the prisoners i was in touch with inside the dualif unit said the iranian government always makes deals for foreigners they always make a deal and a diplomatic exchange or something and send you home so i did have hope that i would be traded in a diplomatic deal once i'd heard that this was something that they did but you have nothing to lose sure they could punish me but there was precious little that they could take away from me which they hadn't already taken yes i got banned from everything um but there were reasons for why i did what i did and what did you do oh gosh um well the first kind of resistance i did were hunger strikes i think i did seven hunger strikes because i guess you're damaging yourself and this is a very common tactic as you know for prisoners all over the world but the biggest thing i did was i managed to escape from the unit they had renovated the outdoor exercise area and we'd been moved to a new place which was a courtyard and i'd seen based on these renovations a way to scale the wall and climb up on the roof of the facility and one day i was just like you know what i'm gonna do it like i have nothing to lose um and there was a sort of a serrated corrugated iron sort of um spikes on part of the wall so i just took some socks with me and put them over my hands and then grabbed onto them hoping they weren't too sharp so i'd be able to scale that part of the wall and it was pretty effective and i climbed the wall got up on the roof um disappeared from view so i was able to walk all the way to the end of the complex and see over the wall of the prison off into the residential neighborhood of evin nearby there was a little river there was a little forest i could have climbed down from the roof via a nearby tree and sort of made my way across to the river and it was a very shallow river i might have been out across it and get out into the residential neighborhood which was very surprising um i probably could have tried to escape but why didn't you where would i have gone what would i have done i didn't speak the language i was in a prison uniform without somebody on the outside to help me to pick me up in their car or something i don't know what i would have done i didn't have any money and if they caught me it would have been you know really serious so did you contemplate it for long i did contemplate it when i was up there because it took them about 20 minutes to find me so i was sort of free to walk around on the roof for quite some time and it was a beautiful day blue sky there were green leaves and trees everywhere and birds flying overhead and i just kind of passed in the sun and i yelled stuff from the roof to entertain my roommates who refused to leave the courtyard down below and i said salam tehran hello tehran i was screaming this at the city from the roof and screaming asadi has early freedom they couldn't get to me on the roof so they some of them came up on a neighbouring roof of a neighboring building which had stair access and um the judicial representative for the prison came and that was the first time i'd seen him and he tried to calm me down tried to calm the situation said what are your demands what's wrong and i said i've got this ridiculous court um i want to go to court i want to finish this i want to be moved to the public prison and i've been banned from phone calls with my family i want to call my family and i want to see the ambassador and these were my demands so i was able to draw attention to my situation i got a two-minute phone call to my father um just two minutes and i had said i want 10 minutes so the interrogators were very very very angry and what did you say to your dad um i don't think i was very nice to him i was sort of panicking and screaming and upset and i just say when you're going to get me out what's going on why is the government doing nothing this court's a joke i've been banned from consular meetings that's against international law um why am i still here why is nobody doing anything and i said go to the media go to the media expose what's happening go to the media but nobody listened to that nobody listened to my my will on that one how was your dad when you spoke to him i can only i can't imagine how he was feeling my poor parents have been through hell in many ways what they experienced was worse than what i experienced because as a parent you just assume the worst and you don't know what's happening to your child come on it's bigger and my family are just simple people they're just country people they're not experts in middle eastern studies you know they haven't really been to the middle east you know they know nothing about iran they don't know where or or where where i am who's captured me and why um they're really out of their depth and i think it was very traumatic for them and they're still quite traumatized by what happened and and they've been through their own journey um so i feel terrible about putting them through that and you know in this particular phone call my dad was great yeah i think i was yelling and screaming and probably crying too and he took it all in his stride and said don't worry we're working on it we'll get you out we'll get you out i was told by the judge in this session if you answer the questions quickly and we get this over and done with then this will be the last time you see me the last time you come to the court it'll be over and i had been pushing for it to be over because i had heard that once your court is finished you get moved to the public prison to a prison where you're much more free you get to live with other people you're not locked in a room 23 hours a day you're not under the control of the revolutionary guards so the whole thing was just you know a kangaroo court as we say in australia it was a joke and the verdict was predetermined the judge wasn't even pretending to be um free and impartial he was very clearly one of them you know one of the revolutionary guards i was brought into the judge's office um to receive the sentence and there was a one-page document outlining my guilt supposed guilt and at the end of the document it said i've received 10 years as my punishment [Music] and i had to write some sort of um response to that and i just wrote i reject this you know ridiculous charge um you know you can do whatever you like to me but freedom is an attitude freedom is a state of mind and i am free no matter what you do to me i'm still free that's what i wrote 10 years yeah it was pretty shocking i didn't really have an expectation i knew they would give me a prison sentence by this point you know having seen the sham which was the court having heard the stories of other prisoners um 10 years was the maximum penalty for the crime i was charged with so i was given the maximum sentence i think had my ordeal been made public there's no way i would have got 10 years but there was no spotlight there was no attention um it was all behind closed doors under cover of darkness conducted secretly and um there was nobody to hold them to account and without any evidence whatsoever i was just simply given a tenure sentence i have to ask you are you or have you ever been a spy no that's crazy there's no evidence of me being a spy for any country um even the revolutionary guards couldn't figure out which country i was supposedly spying for i was eventually charged with being an israeli inspired because that was the easier thing you know any mention of israel in iran you know israel is the delicious satan or whatever they call it and um for the revolutionary guards in particular that was just the easiest country they could try to link me to but even a few months before my release so mid-2020 they were floating a theory that i was an mi6 agent you know and this was well after i'd been convicted and tried of being an israeli agent and during my interrogation they were working on the theory i was an australian spy for a while i was also accused of being a bahraini spy because of my research on bahrain so they really had no idea there was no evidence did you know that back here we had no idea you were locked up it was a good 12 months into your sentence before it even made news and it was made public did you have any idea that nobody knew yes i knew that it was deliberately being kept out of the media that was against my wishes and from the first six weeks to two months of my arrest i had been demanding getting my phone calls cut because i was demanding from my family they go to the media um i knew when it was leaked to the media i don't know from which source or how um but my roommate came into the room one day after having a call with her family and she said kylie this is my friend nilofer you are all over the media everybody knows and not only you jolly and mark as well because i'd known jolly was there by that point and i'd managed to speak to her so when they made news that's when you made news yes yeah i think i've been told that the media knew about my incarceration but they were told by the government to keep it quiet and they deliberately didn't publish why because the line being run by the government was that trying to find a solution diplomatically behind the scenes with iran was the best approach for getting me out and um that the media would complicate things and could make iran angry and piss them off and make things worse for me i took a very different view of the situation um based on my own experience being inside there um but that was the view of the government and the media played ball for months at least at the beginning until i think these two backpackers got arrested and the media already knew my name and knew i was there too so once that got out then they published my name as well and certainly when i did when it did become public i did notice much greater attention was paid to my health and my condition so i certainly saw benefits from that and i'm not convinced that the quiet diplomacy argument stacks up in in such a case although each case is different and i am very thankful to the australian government for you know freeing me in the end my family said marie's pain was fantastic in particular and nick warner and the australian ambassador to iran lindel sachs was phenomenal as well were you ever tortured physically were you ever hurt i was physically beaten on one occasion um i was never physically tortured the things that you think about i don't know pulling fingernails or being electrocuted now that has ever done to me um i was beaten up once and forcibly injected with a tranquilizing a syringe of tranquilizer against my will um and that was in early 2020 why were you beaten up was there a reason or was it just they could i was trying to leak one of my letters uh that i'd written to the public prosecutor outlining the injustice of my case i'd written that letter in january 2020 and in february 2020 i had written a copy of it and passed it to a doctor in the hospital this doctor and i'd got it past all of the guards and all of their checks and the guard didn't see anything but i gave it to the doctor and the doctor betrayed me and took the letter looked at it and then put it on the table in front of the guard and said i can't do that sorry and the guard went crazy because she knew she'd be punished and she knew she'd made mistakes in not checking me properly before taking me to the doctor and she called them a male colleague of hers and both of them assaulted me that doctor um i said to him and fasting what are you doing are you a real doctor or are you an interrogator i'm your patient like if you can't do that throw it in the bin you don't have to show them you don't have to show these guys that i've given you a letter just spin it [Music] i understand that was formerly a chicken slaughterhouse and has been referred to as the worst women's prison in the world is that title warranted i think the title of worst women's prison in the world is a bit of an over exaggeration i'm sure there are worse places um although i'm not an expert obviously it was pretty bad but you know i didn't necessarily suffer there to the extent that i suffered in avian in due life under the control of the revolutionary guards there is nothing like solitary confinement that is just hell but being transferred there and suddenly having other women around me for me it was a positive experience because i wasn't alone anymore and it was very interesting to meet some of the other prisoners there because this was a regular public prison there were very few political prisoners nearly everybody was an actual criminal or you know often i think an innocent person who'd fallen victim to a corrupt justice system but not for a security or political related crime so i went from being alone for seven months in a room to sleeping in a room with a hundred women um the fact that i wasn't alone and i had friends after so long was really important to me did you ever have any trouble from any other prisoners did they try to cause any trouble for you no i understood that i had protection um i think the revolutionary guards had told car check prison if anything happens to this foreign woman who is of high value to us then there will be hell to pay if anybody wanted to be physically violent to me i would have had 10 tens more prisoners jumping on my side and protect me i had a lot of friends there i i was friends with everybody were you a little bit of a celebrity oh i wouldn't say a celebrity but everybody knew who i was because i was the token westerner the only westerner in the prison how much contact was there with home at this point um i know that it depended on where you were and phone calls you mentioned letters were you able to get many back and forth i was never able to send or receive letters um my family the the only contact i really had with them was via whatsapp if i was allowed to call i would call from whatsapp and sometimes i would be allowed to read their messages on whatsapp what about your husband would they let him ring or make any contact were you able to make contact with him at the beginning yes i called him quite a bit when i was in interrogation but um due to his behavior on the phone calls and his general behavior after my arrest he was seen as suspicious and they didn't want me to call him so i didn't i kind of stopped calling him based on what they wanted the revolutionary guards and in the end what i wanted he is an israeli citizen they wanted you to recruit him is that right bring him over there they didn't want me to recruit him i think they wanted to me to lure him to iran so that they could arrest him and get their hands on an extremely high value hostage i mean can you imagine if the revolutionary guards got their hands on an israeli it would be the price they could you know demand for that it would be a pr coup it would be just it's just unimaginable like and he would never have come they were dreaming to think that my husband would be so stupid as to travel to iran they said to me i have to call him and say if he comes to iran and lets them interview him they will let both of us go given i asked her of you it's only fair to ask it about him has he ever been a spy no i would know if he was um [Music] you know i lived with him for years i never saw any evidence of any spying activity or anything i mean he's he's pretty australian actually for a new immigrant like he he's engaged with the australian culture and he's not as attached to israel as you might think and he certainly doesn't have that sort of strong zionist ideology otherwise he wouldn't have left israel he wouldn't have moved to australia so all of this time while you are this porn being used in what is a diplomatic game how did you stay sane through all of this i think feeling that i was an active participant in my fate and my destiny really was important to me uh that i wasn't just a damsel in distress shut up in my tower waiting for other people to come and save me i knew when a diplomatic deal started to be talked about um i knew that the reason that they didn't engage in any meaningful negotiations with the australians was because they wanted to recruit me they wanted me to work for them as a spy did they straight out ask you yes many times what did they say that if i cooperated with them and agreed to become a spy for them they would free me i could win my freedom i could make a deal with them they obviously wanted to have their cake in egypt too so they wanted to both recruit me and make a deal with the australian government to get something in return for my freedom i don't think they were particularly interested in spying on australia they were more interested in me using my academic status as a cover story and traveling to other middle eastern countries and perhaps european countries perhaps america i don't know and collecting information for them there [Music] i understood that i was being transferred from karjak back to the diwali facility in evan prison as some sort of step toward my freedom i was told i'd only have to suffer through that hellish nightmare for one week max the ambassador told me three days and the interrogators on the same day told me one week so i knew they deliberately led her astray about it and if they said one week well it could have been max two weeks i was thinking you know you can't really trust what they say um but i knew that that was some sort of precondition or stepped for whatever reason to my freedom that i had to be back under the exclusive control of the revolutionary guards again in order to be freed once the two-week mark passed um you know i was really suffering there it was horrible and they their behavior toward me during that five weeks that i ultimately spent there was disgusting i was being punished people were angry i think that i was going to be freed and were using that as an opportunity to make me suffer before i was freed um it was one of the worst periods of time that i spent in prison was that five weeks before my freedom [Music] [Applause] and after five weeks lindell sucks the ambassador came for a meeting i was pulled down i didn't know who i was meeting or where i was going masked pulled into this room and met with lindell and i was so happy to see her and she's so strong and gives such positive energy and positive vibes so it was great to see her and she you know i said look i'm broken i can't deal with this anymore i don't know why i'm here why you told me three days i've been here five weeks and she said kylie hold on for another 48 hours we're gonna get you out did you still believe it would happen or what what were your thoughts that very final night in that cell i had hope at that point i'd allowed myself to hope but there was a little voice in the back of my head that said maybe it wouldn't happen maybe it didn't get cancelled again i did manage to sleep a few hours and um still pace my cell as usual until yeah you know 10 o'clock 11 o'clock at night and um woke up very early in the morning nothing happened it was a very long delay i was supposed to be out by 11am and i was still in my cell at 11am and i had to go through this checkout procedure from the prison uh feeling hilariously filling a customer satisfaction survey basically in farsi about my satisfaction or otherwise of the duality facility which um was hilarious what did you write well they asked me all sorts of things about the food and about my treatment and everything i wrote the truth but i was also really rushing to go so i didn't really have time to sit down and write in farsi you know the food was terrible because of xyz but i did say the truth i said this is appalling um you know you should treat prisoners better you should do better than this [Music] when you landed in canberra i know you had to go into hotel quarantine when was the first moment you saw your family my mother was in hotel quarantine with me so um she was in the hotel before i arrived so i opened the door of the hotel room and she was there and that was lovely yeah she just gave me the biggest hug and she's very understated so she didn't say anything dramatic no mass outpouring of of how much um she loves me but of course she said she loves me and i said i love her and we just hugged and had some low-key time together mother-daughter time um it was nice when was the moment that you felt safe i don't know if i feel safe even now um i guess you always have a lingering fear when i was in um hotel quarantine for that two weeks after arriving back in australia i still felt maybe there's cameras watching me or you know it was sort of like a five-star prison cell the hotel quarantine and um i liked it it was familiar to me it was comforting to be locked in a room um but yet still having internet and good food and whatever but when i left that hotel quarantine the first time i walked the streets my friend rosie was there and my mom was with me and at midnight we were allowed out technically so at midnight we went and walked the streets off canberra and they were empty and it was dark and i just felt terrified i felt it was an overwhelming experience because it was the first time i'd been outdoors without being caged in somewhere or with a camera on me for almost two and a half years and i felt like somebody's gonna come running after me and tap me on the shoulder and say no get back in the hotel your homecoming was bittersweet inasmuch as there was one person who wasn't there to greet you how did you find out that your marriage wasn't in the same state as it was when you left australia nearly three years ago i knew that it wasn't in the same state that it was when i left i knew that there was a problem at least 12 months before i came home he had changed and i was upset and disappointed that he wasn't supporting me to the extent that i would have hoped he would he stopped telling me he loved me over the phone i understood that something had shifted for him and for me too i didn't necessarily think that our marriage was over but i was thinking to myself based on that maybe i didn't want to stay with him so um it wasn't necessarily a surprise that my marriage came to an end but although he never told my family and never told me that he wants to leave me and maintained the deception right up until the end um i knew that there was something wrong i didn't know about the infidelity or that the other person involved would be who she was who told you that he was having an affair my mother told me when i was when i arrived in the hotel quarantine because i said um okay mum where's ruslan what's going on i haven't even heard from him he hasn't even called me or anything to say i'm happy you're free what's the deal i said you've got to tell me mum i mean it's obvious something's up i'm strong i can handle it and so um she'd found out the day before from a third person third party who wasn't really known to the family but a lot of people unfortunately knew about this affair and um this person after seeing on the news that i had been freed thought i don't think the family knows and somebody's got to tell them and then my family found out and and called simon and he confirmed it can you tell us the role that dr kylie baxter played in your career in when you were incarcerated i understand that she was a colleague she was your phd supervisor what else was she doing when liaison is that correct with your family yeah she was the liaison um between melbourne university and my family after my arrest so keeping your mom and dad informed about your dan ruslan about your condition yes yeah so a conflict of interest emerged there obviously um is she the one that he was having an affair with yes did rosalind your husband stand up and fight for you while you were in prison i don't know what he was doing or what he wasn't doing i haven't spoken to him have you spoken to dr baxter no you're locked up for 804 days you finally come home to find that your husband has had an affair with the woman that was meant to be liaising and supporting your family was that just the ultimate kick in the guts the nature of it given my closeness to both of them was very disappointing for me in a way it's been harder for me to um process and come to terms with that then it has been what happened to me in iran i respect your dignity and i respect your grace but my god you're locked up in prison it's not like you were on holidays in hawaii you're in a jail on the other side of the world of course things are going to change and shift and i'm sorry i'm getting angry for you i just um thank you i just i you know your wife is going through hell come on i think he suffered a lot at the beginning too um and was quite vulnerable according to him i don't know i don't know what happens i don't want to know i don't want to dwell on it i just want to move on honestly i i wish him all the best he's not an evil person she's not an evil person i hope they're happy together and um i hope we can all just move on with our lives [Music] what did you miss the most when you were in prison one of the hardest things for me was not having fresh air and not being able to go outside to feel the wind in my hair like we are now to be in nature and um you know i really love the great outdoors and to be prevented from doing that for such a lengthy period of time was really really tough for me i always knew i would survive and i would come back [Music] i love australia i love the bush i love the landscape here 100 i would see the bush again does the future look right to you yet it does um i'm very positive about the future at least optimistic i hope you know i don't know what the future will hold for me i don't have a trajectory in mind necessarily i would love to write a book about my experiences i put a lot of thought into it whilst i was still in prison obviously had a lot of time in my hands and writing is quite therapeutic for me too i've been doing a bit of writing so i hope that's something i can pursue in the [Music] future right now i just want to focus on healing recovery rest trying to get a sense of normality back into my life um catching up with friends and family tying up loose ends you know just trying to reestablish myself put down roots again and reconnect with reality and with my freedom and [Music] yeah try and get on with it get on with living my life [Music] you

Channel: Sky News Australia

Views: 1,018,941

Keywords: iran, kylie moore-gilbert, prisoners, hostage, australia, sky news, sky news australia

Id: yTCLw9dXZKo

Length: 59min 57sec (3597 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 10 2022