On Christmas Eve, two female scientists began a hunger strike at the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a British Australian expert on Shia Islam from the University of Melbourne, and Dr. Fariba Adelkhah, a French Iranian anthropologist working at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, were arrested during research visits to Iran and were accused of espionage by the intelligence service of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Moore-Gilbert, who is in her early 30s, extensively wrote on the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain. She was detained at Tehran airport in October 2018 while boarding a flight back to Melbourne after making an invited presentation at the university conference. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison in a closed trial that shocked Australia. Since her arrest, she has been kept in solitary confinement in a 65-square-foot cell.
