May 14, 2021
Dr. Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian Islamic studies scholar held by Iran for 804 days until last November, has announced that her divorce has now been completed.
Upon her return, she discovered her Russian-Israeli husband, Ruslan Hodorov, had been having an affair with Dr. Kylie Baxter, her university colleague and PhD supervisor, while she was held captive.
The 33-year-old filed for divorce shortly after her release, and made the announcement that it was official on her Twitter account April 8.
Both Hodorov, 31, and Baxter, 43, pushed for Moore-Gilbert’s release after her arrest for espionage in September 2018 at Tehran airport as she attempted to leave the country.
She was reported to have suffered ‘immense’ shock on learning of her husband’s betrayal, with friends previously telling Australian news outlets the affair started a year after Moore-Gilbert’s arrest.
Before her September 2018 arrest, Moore-Gilbert and Hodorov had just bought a house in Melbourne after marrying in 2017 in a Jewish ceremony. They met a decade earlier when she visited Israel, where Hodorov lived after emigrating from Russia with his family.
When she was arrested, Moore-Gilbert—who is also the cousin of Julian Assange—had been attending a conference in Iran when she was flagged as “suspicious” by a fellow academic and by a person she had interviewed for research, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.