SYDNEY: An Australian academic held in Iran for more than two years has been returned to Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, friends said Friday, prompting fresh concern about her wellbeing.
Kylie Moore-Gilbert — who is serving a 10-year sentence on charges of espionage — had disappeared inside Iran’s prison system a week ago, sparking frantic efforts to learn her whereabouts.
“I’m relieved that the Australian government has finally managed to locate Kylie six days after she went missing,” friend and fellow Middle East expert Dara Conduit told AFP. “But make no mistake: this is not a win for Kylie.”
Conditions at Evin are believed to be marginally better than Moore-Gilbert’s previous jail at Qarchak — a women’s facility that has been blacklisted under UN human rights sanctions and is notorious for the ill-treatment of political prisoners.
During a previous stint at Evin, Moore-Gilbert reported being held in restrictive conditions and needing psychiatric medications for “gravely damaged” mental health.
Friends believe she is now being held in the same ward as before, a facility controlled by Iran’s hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Australia’s foreign ministry has said securing her release is an “absolute priority,” but was forced to admit this week that her whereabouts were unknown.
“We do not accept the charges upon which Dr. Moore-Gilbert was convicted, and want to see her returned to Australia as soon as possible,” the ministry said after ambassador Lyndall Sachs was able to visit her in Qarchak Prison on October 19.
Throughout Moore-Gilbert’s internment, friends and family have become increasingly critical of what they say is Australia’s ineffective diplomatic approach.
According to Conduit: “Not one iota of progress has been made in her case, despite the government’s assurances that Kylie’s case is under control.”
She called Moore-Gilbert’s transfer back to Evin “an utter indictment of the Australian government’s failure on Kylie’s case.”
“After 778 days, she is back at square one in the prison in which she was originally held.”
Moore-Gilbert was reportedly arrested at Tehran airport by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in September 2018 after attending a conference in Qoms.
She is just one of several Westerners being held in Iran on national security grounds.
Negotiations with Tehran are notoriously difficult, with governments and families forced to decide if quiet discussions are less likely to antagonize captors, often against a fraught geopolitical backdrop.
Iran’s complex political and judicial system — which sees hard-liners, reformists and myriad state institutions vying for influence — can make things more complex still.
Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert moved to notorious Tehran jail
https://arab.news/bus46
Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert moved to notorious Tehran jail
- During a previous stint at Evin, Moore-Gilbert reported being held in restrictive conditions and needing psychiatric medications for “gravely damaged” mental health
- Friends believe she is now being held in the same ward as before, a facility controlled by Iran’s hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
Lebanon PM says IMF wants rescue plan changes as crisis deepens
- “We want to engage with the IMF. We want to improve. This is a draft law,” Salam said
- “They wanted the hierarchy of claims to be clearer. The talks are all positive”
DAVOS, Switzerland: The International Monetary Fund has demanded amendments to a draft rescue law aimed at hauling Lebanon out of its worst financial crisis on record and giving depositors access to savings frozen for six years, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said.
The “financial gap” law is part of a series of reform measures required by the IMF in order to access its funding and aims to allocate the losses from Lebanon’s 2019 crash between the state, the central bank, commercial banks and depositors.
Salam told Reuters the IMF wants clearer provisions in the hierarchy of claims, which is a core element of the draft legislation designed to determine how losses are allocated.
“We want to engage with the IMF. We want to improve. This is a draft law,” Salam said in an interview at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos.
“They wanted the hierarchy of claims to be clearer. The talks are all positive,” Salam added.
In 2022, the government put losses from the financial crisis at about $70 billion, a figure that analysts and economists forecast is now likely to be higher.
Salam stressed that Lebanon is still pushing for a long-delayed IMF program, but warned the clock is ticking as the country has already been placed on a financial ‘grey list’ and risks falling onto the ‘blacklist’ if reforms stall further.
“We want an IMF program and we want to continue our discussions until we get there,” he said, adding: “International pressure is real ... The longer we delay, the more people’s money will evaporate.”
The draft law, which was passed by Salam’s government in December, is under parliamentary review. It aims to give depositors a guaranteed path to recovering their funds, restart bank lending, and end a financial crisis that has left nearly a million accounts frozen and confidence in the system shattered.
The roadmap would repay depositors up to $100,000 over four years, starting with smaller accounts, while launching forensic audits to determine losses and responsibility.
Lebanon’s Finance Minister Yassine Jaber, who is driving the reform push with Salam, told Reuters it was essential to salvage a hollowed-out banking system, and to stop the country from sliding deeper into its cash-only, paralyzed economy.
The aim, Jaber said, is to give depositors clarity after years of uncertainty and to end a system that has crippled Lebanon’s international standing.
He framed the law as part of a broader reckoning: the first time a Lebanese government has confronted a combined collapse of the banking sector, the central bank and the state treasury.
Financial reforms have been repeatedly derailed by political and private vested interests over the last six years and Jaber said the responsibility now lies with lawmakers.
Failure to act, he said, would leave Lebanon trapped in “a deep, dark tunnel” with no way back to a functioning system.
“Lebanon has become a cash economy, and the real question is whether we want to stay on the grey list, or sleepwalk into a blacklist,” Jaber added.
