‘A nightmare’: Kylie Moore-Gilbert’s 804 days as a victim of Iran’s hostage diplomacy

Accused of being a foreign spy by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, British-Australian academic Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert spent much of her imprisonment in solitary confinement. Photograph: Kristoffer Paulsen

To leave Tehran’s Evin prison is never as simple as to walk out of its gates. The British-Australian academic Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert survived 804 days as a defiant hostage to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), accused variously of being a Mossad agent, an MI6 agent or a spy for Australia, and held in the Guard Corps’ notorious 2A wing of Evin.

Two years since Moore-Gilbert won her freedom, reminders of the cruel capriciousness of Iran’s hostage diplomacy are all around.