Iran intended to use Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a British-Australian Middle East researcher handed a 10-year jail sentence, to lure her Israeli-Russian husband into the country, the Australian Herald Sun reported on Sunday.
The report cites a letter from Moore-Glibert to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison suggesting she was used as a hostage in a plot to arrest her husband.
The man, Ruslan Hodorov, was seen by Iranians as a spy for Mossad — Israel's foreign intelligence service.
“The Revolutionary Guard have imprisoned me in these terrible conditions for over nine months in order to extort me both personally and my government,” the letter states.
“They have also attempted to use me as a hostage in a diabolical plot to lure my husband, an Australian permanent resident into joining me in an Iranian prison,” the academic adds.
Moore-Gilbert was detained by the Iranian authorities in 2018 as she was about to leave the country, where she attended an academic conference.
She was charged with espionage and handed a 10-year jail term, spending 804 days in prison to eventually be released in a suspected prisoner swap as Thailand set three jailed Iranians free.
According to the Herald Sun, Moore-Gilbert now seeks a divorce as her husband got into an affair with her colleague while she was in the Iranian prison.