{"id":43358,"date":"2020-07-28T17:23:56","date_gmt":"2020-07-28T17:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=43358"},"modified":"2020-07-28T17:23:56","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T17:23:56","slug":"iran-reports-record-one-day-virus-toll-of-235-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=43358","title":{"rendered":"Iran reports record one-day virus toll of 235 dead"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"104\">\n<p>\nLONDON:\u00a0A British-Australian woman serving a 10-year jail term in Iran has been transferred to a notorious desert prison used to punish political prisoners, officials say.<\/p>\n<p>\nKylie Moore-Gilbert, a lecturer in Middle East politics at Melbourne University, was jailed in September 2018 for espionage. She was tried in secret and strongly denies all charges against her.<\/p>\n<p>\nMoore-Gilbert had been held at Evin prison in Tehran before being transferred to the notorious Qarchak prison, located in the desert east of the capital.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\nThe Human Rights\u2019 Activists News Agency (HRANA) said Qarchak has the worst reputation among all Iranian women\u2019s prisons.<\/p>\n<p>\nIt is often used as punishment for Iranian political prisoners, and its conditions have been described as abysmal by former inmates.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cQarchak jail is where common prisoners are held. It\u2019s overcrowded and some of them are dangerous,\u201d said Hadi Ghaemi, director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran.<\/p>\n<p>\nPrior to her transfer, Moore-Gilbert had been in solitary confinement and on several hunger strikes.<\/p>\n<p>\nShe is said to have been beaten for trying to comfort new prisoners by passing notes and writing to them on prison walls.<\/p>\n<p>\nShe had also rejected an offer of freedom in return for spying on behalf of Iran. \u201cI am not a spy,\u201d she said in letters smuggled out of prison in January.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cI have never been a spy and I have no interest to work for a spying organization in any country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nGhaemi said: \u201cThey\u2019re not happy with her resilience and her refusal to cooperate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nPrevented from contacting her family, conditions in the desert prison are taking a heavy toll on the jailed academic\u2019s mental health.<\/p>\n<p>\n\u201cI think I am in the midst of a serious psychological problem,\u201d she wrote in January, worsened by \u201cthe ban on having any phone calls with my family.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nReza Khandan, husband of imprisoned human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, said in a Facebook post that Moore-Gilbert is in \u201ca very bad condition.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nHe wrote that she had told him: \u201cI can\u2019t eat anything, I don\u2019t know, I\u2019m so disappointed. I\u2019m so very depressed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nIn a statement on Tuesday, Australia\u2019s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said:\u00a0\u201cDr Moore-Gilbert\u2019s case is one of the Australian government\u2019s highest priorities, including for our embassy officials in Tehran.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nThe Australian government has said it holds Iran responsible for Moore-Gilbert\u2019s \u201csafety and well-being,\u201d and is \u201curgently seeking access\u201d to her.<\/p>\n<p>\nIran frequently imprisons foreign nationals on dubious grounds.\u00a0British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been held in Evin prison since 2016 for \u201cplotting to topple the Iranian government.\u201d She also vehemently denies these charges.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LONDON:\u00a0A British-Australian woman serving a 10-year jail term in Iran has been transferred to a notorious desert prison used to punish political prisoners, officials say. Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a lecturer in Middle East politics at Melbourne University, was jailed in September 2018 for espionage. She was tried in secret and strongly denies all charges against her.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spotlight_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}