Iranian physics student to be tried for spying
JUL 15, 2011
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.025454
Nature : For the past six months, Omid Kokabee, an Iranian graduate student who is affiliated with the physics department of the University of Texas at Austin, has been held in an Iranian jail on suspicion of conspiring against Iran. Now, as Nature‘s Michele Catanzaro reports, Kokabee will face trial—possibly tomorrow—on charges of “communicating with a hostile government” and “illegal earnings.” Kokabee’s field of study is laser physics, not the more strategically sensitive nuclear physics or astronautical engineering. Nor, according to Kokabee’s friends and colleagues, is he a political activist. The New York–based Committee of Concerned Scientists has written to Iran’s supreme leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Hoseyni Khamene’i, urging Kokabee’s release and pointing out that
imprisonment of Omid Kokabee and his upcoming trial have planted fear in the hearts of Iranian students that are currently studying abroad. Instead of bringing their skills and knowledge back to Iran, many of them are re-thinking their future in fear of reprisal on their return home.
© 2011 American Institute of Physics
