i do think that would have been a red flag. but the thing is, i was invited to iran by an iranian university who, given my research output, decided that i was suitable to attend their university seminar. ithen.. and i was concerned about this, but i had nothing to hide. all they needed to do was google me to see what my area of research interest is, for example, and what countries i visited, i mean, i had written about it. so i went to the iranian embassy in canberra and deliberately applied in advance for my visa, being upfront that i was going to attend a university seminar, i had been invited by an iranian university, and gave them every opportunity to google my name and check my background. i didn t declare that my ex husband had an israeli passport, but i didn t believe that they would find that out. but also, i didn t believe it was relevant. i m not an israeli citizen.
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. he was a seminary student, so he wasn t a refugee from bahrain or anything like that.
have been a red flag. but the thing is, i was invited to iran by an iranian university who, given my research output, decided that i was suitable to attend their university seminar. ithen.. and i was concerned about this, but i had nothing to hide. all they needed to do was google me to see what my area of research interest is, for example, and what countries i visited, i mean, i had written about it. so i went to the iranian embassy in canberra and deliberately applied in advance for my visa, being upfront that i was going to attend a university seminar, i had been invited by an iranian university, and gave them every opportunity to google my name and check my background. i didn t declare that my ex husband had an israeli passport, but i didn t believe that they would find that out. but also, i didn t believe it was relevant. i m not an israeli citizen. he was born in russia,
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 the location of the university
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 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.