‘The beginning of the end’

KYLIE Moore-Gilbert believes the protests in Iran spell the beginning of the end for the Islamic Republic’s “despotic regime”.

The rioting was sparked by the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, who died in custody after being detained by Iran’s ‘morality police’ for not complying with the country’s hijab rules.

Dozens are believed to have been killed and arrested since the protests began, but Moore-Gilbert told The AJN she believes the fear factor in Iran has already been “shattered”.

“Protesters in Iran have crossed a path of no return,” she said.

“One of the key pillars of the Islamic Republic, compulsory hijab, has crumbled. Even if the regime manages to claw its way back from this with brutal repression, the fear factor has been shattered, particularly among young people. I believe this is the beginning of the end for the despotic regime of aging clerics. It’s now a matter of when, not if, the Ayatollahs fall.”

Moore-Gilbert recently launched legal against Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi and hopes this has achieved her aim of drawing attention to his “blood-soaked record of human rights abuses”.

Moore-Gilbert, an Australian academic, was imprisoned in Iran for more than two years after a secret trial and was subjected to dehumanising treatment and solitary confinement.

The legal action is the mastermind of the Iranian pro-democracy lobby group NUFDI and is being managed by the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Litigation initiative. The civil suit was timed to coincide with Raisi’s appearance at the United Nation’s General Assembly in New York.

“I am a plaintiff in a group case against President Raisi, which was officially launched in New York one day before Raisi was due to address the UN General Assembly,” Moore-Gilbert said.

“We are suing Raisi as an individual under the US Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA). I contributed testimony and an affidavit to their lawyers relating to my unjust imprisonment and sham trial, as Raisi was the head of the judiciary during much of the time I spent in prison in Iran, and was therefore ultimately responsible for my deprivation of liberty and mistreatment.

“(We are) trying to demand some accountability for his crimes. Raisi was a judge on the ‘death commissions’ in Iran in 1988, which sent thousands of political prisoners to the gallows without due process. He is a war criminal and rather than being accepted as a statesman at the UN, should be himself put on trial.”