kylie moore gilbert in melbourne, welcome to hardtalk. thanks so much for having me. it s a real pleasure to have you on the show. it is pretty much a year and a half now since you were released from imprisonment in iran. how much distance do you now feel from that whole experience? it feels sometimes like it never happened. it feels like it was a very lengthy, especially vivid nightmare that ijust dreamt one night when i was asleep and have woken up the next day, and i still have those memories of that nightmare lingering with me. but because i m in the same familiarspaces, back at my home that i was in before i went to iran, sometimes i have to pinch myself and remind myself that i ve actually gone through that terrible ordeal and that experience in real life. you did say a little while ago, you said when you first released, you think that you re going to be shattered, you re going to be broken but actually, that s not really true. from my experience, at least, you say the
after 804 days behind bars. is it possible to heal after such a shattering ordeal? kylie moore gilbert in melbourne, welcome to hardtalk. thanks so much for having me. it s a real pleasure to have you on the show. it is pretty much a year and a half now since you were released from imprisonment in iran. how much distance do you now feel from that whole experience? it feels sometimes like it never happened. it feels like it was a very lengthy, especially vivid nightmare that ijust dreamt one night when i was asleep and have woken up the next day, and i still have those memories of that nightmare lingering with me. but because i m in the same familiarspaces, back at my home that i was in before i went to iran, sometimes i have to pinch myself and remind myself that i ve actually gone through that terrible ordeal and that experience in real life. you did say a little while ago, you said when you first released, you think that you re going to be shattered, you re going to be brok
in further detail, but basically a bahraini guy who i met in qom, which was the location of the university seminar i was attending, i interviewed him informally, i had a few informal chats with him about bahrain, not about iran, but about my research into the shia community in bahrain. and this individual, who did not at all seem to me to be sympathetic to a hardline islamist worldview, he was linked to the irgc, to the revolutionary guards, in some way. and he flagged me as suspicious with them or alerted them to my presence. so i popped up on their radar because of this individual, and i think. my guess would be he had a pre existing relationship with them. perhaps he was an informer on the bahraini community within iran, acting for the security services to inform on his own people in qom, because there are a lot of bahrainis in iran for various reasons.
in the book, i elaborate in further detail, but basically a bahraini guy who i met in qom, which was the location of the university seminar i was attending, i interviewed him informally, i had a few informal chats with him about bahrain, not about iran, but about my research into the shia community in bahrain. and this individual, who did not at all seem to me to be sympathetic to a hardline islamist worldview, he was linked to the irgc, to the revolutionary guards, in some way. and he flagged me as suspicious with them or alerted them to my presence. so i popped up on their radar because of this individual, and i think. my guess would be he had a pre existing relationship with them. perhaps he was an informer on the bahraini community within iran, acting for the security
to actually put you before a court, convict you and sentence you. and then they sentenced you to ten years for espionage. i m not even going to bother asking you whether you were indeed a spy, because i think that s sort of ridiculous given who you are and your background and the way you ve told your story, but nonetheless i do have to ask you, have you figured out why they targeted you and why they did this to you? yes, i knew from the first few days of my arrest why they targeted me. in fact, they told me. that was initially because of my connections with bahrainis, actually, my research about bahrain. and i got really, really unlucky. in the book i elaborate in further detail, but basically a bahraini guy who i met in qom, which was