LONDON: An Australian-British academic jailed in Iran for espionage rejected Tehran’s offer to work as a spy, according to letters she smuggled out of prison published in British media on Tuesday.

Kylie Moore-Gilbert wrote that the first 10 months she spent in an isolated Revolutionary Guard-run wing of Tehran’s Evin prison had “gravely damaged” her mental health, according to extracts in the Guardian and the Times newspapers.

“I am still denied phone calls and visitations, and I am afraid that my mental and emotional state may further deteriorate if I remain in this extremely restrictive detention ward,” she wrote.

She is serving a 10-year sentence for espionage, charges which she rejected, along with offers to become a spy for Iran.

“Please accept this letter as an official and definitive rejection of your offer to me to work with the intelligence branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps,” she wrote, according to the Guardian.

“I am not a spy. I have never been a spy and I have no interest to work for a spying organisation in any country.

“When I leave Iran, I want to be a free woman and live a free life, not under the shadow of extortion and threats,” she added. The academic’s arrest was confirmed in September.

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2020