Kylie Moore-Gilbert has revealed Iran asked her to become a spy during her drawn-out imprisonment, which she says was a torturous experience that gave her "prolonged anxiety" and "panic attacks".
The 33-year-old British-Australian academic returned to Australia in November after serving two years and three months of a 10-year prison sentence in two of Iran's most notorious prisons.
She was arrested at Tehran's airport in 2018 on allegations of spying, though she and the Australian government have always denied the allegations.
Now, the lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at Melbourne University has revealed Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps tried to recruit her as a spy "many times" while she was in prison.
“I knew that the reason that they didn’t engage in any meaningful negotiations with the Australians (for my release) was because they wanted to recruit me, they wanted me to work for them as a spy,” she told Sky News Australia on Tuesday night.
“(They said) 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."
Dr Moore-Gilbert said the country was trying to recruit her while at the same time trying to negotiate a hostage release deal.
The Australian government has refused to confirm that the academic's freedom was extracted through a prisoner swap.
Iranian media claimed three of the country's citizens were released in exchange for Dr Moore-Gilbert. Thailand said it had transferred three Iranians involved in a botched 2012 bomb plot back to Tehran, but declined to call it a swap.
While she was in prison, the Iranian authorities weren't particularly interested in using her to spy on Australia, Dr Moore-Gilbert said.
“They were more interested in me using my academic status as a cover story and travelling to other Middle Eastern countries and perhaps European countries, perhaps America, and collecting information for them there.”
But despite her perceived value, Dr Moore-Gilbert has spoken out about her maltreatment in prison, which began as soon as she was detained.
The academic was sent to Tehran's notorious Evin prison, where she was placed in solitary confinement under the sole control of the Revolutionary Guard for almost two years.
Her first four weeks were spent in a tiny, dirty and cold cell with no window or toilet where her captors used "psychological torture" to try and break her, including constant light and noise.
"I felt physical pain from the psychological trauma I felt in that room ... I’d lost it, I’d lost the plot. I was completely crazy. Just entertaining your brain for such a long period of time."
She says she suffered a "prolonged anxiety attack or panic attack" but as the weeks dragged on, she "slowed her brain down and could exist" in a lethargic and dull state that enabled her to stop thinking and feeling.
As the months passed, she drew strength from her anger and repeated a daily mantra: "I am free. Not matter what you do to me, I am still free".
"I was never physically tortured with the things you think about like pulling fingernails or being electrocuted - that never happened to me - but I was beaten up once and forcibly injected with a syringe of tranquilliser against my will and that was in early 2020," she said.
Quiet diplomacy 'against my wishes'
Dr Moore-Gilbert says she maintained hope that she would be freed through a diplomatic deal orchestrated by the Australian government, but became frustrated by the inaction and Australia's approach of "quiet diplomacy".
She says she knew her story was "being deliberately kept out of the media” while the government tried to negotiate a quiet solution.
"That was against my wishes," she said.
Once her story became public in Australia more than a year after her arrest, she said she noticed “much greater attention was paid to my health and my condition".
Though Dr Moore-Gilbert says she's grateful for the Australian government for negotiating her final release, she says "she's not convinced the quiet diplomacy argument stacks up".
On Wednesday morning, Prime Minister Scott Morrison was asked about those comments at a press conference.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert begins her journey towards freedom, November 2020. Source: AAP
“Her bravery, her courage, her resilience is something extraordinary and I know she is deeply grateful for all the work done by the government and by the officials,” he told reporters in Canberra.
“Now, Kylie Moore-Gilbert obviously can't be aware of all the things that the government has been involved in to secure her release over a long period of time and the many other matters that were running over that period.
“There will be views about this matter, but what I know is that at all times … our top priority consular case was to get Kylie home.”
Bittersweet tastes of freedom
Dr Moore-Gilbert teared up as she spoke of her first true tastes of freedom in Australia, such as seeing her mother, who was waiting for her in a Canberra hotel room.
"I opened the door of the hotel room and she was there, and that was lovely. She just gave me the biggest hug ... of course she said loves me and I said I love her and we just hugged and had some low-key time together, mother-daughter time. It was nice."
But she says the first time she went outdoors, when she was able to leave hotel quarantine at midnight and take a walk on the streets of Canberra in the dark, she felt "terrified".
"It was an overwhelming experience. It was the first time I'd been outdoors, without being caged in somewhere or having a camera on me for almost two and a half years, and I felt like someone was going to come running after me, tap me on the shoulder and and say, 'no, get back in the hotel'."
But the homecoming was tarred by Dr Moore-Gilbert's discovery that her Russian-Israeli husband Ruslan Hodorov had been having an affair with her colleague and PhD supervisor Dr Kylie Baxter, who was the liaison between her family and Melbourne University while she was in prison.
"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 process and come to terms with that than it has been what happened to me in Iran."
Dr Moore-Gilbert said she is loving being back in Australia and is now enjoying being "in the great outdoors" again.
"I always knew I would survive and I would come back. I love Australia, I love the bush, I love the landscape here. One hundred per cent knew I would see the bush again."
She said she's "optimistic about the future" and is keen to write a book about her experiences.
But she's keen to focus on herself first.
"Right now I just want to focus on healing, recovery, rest."
With Evan Young.
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