The Painful Fate of an Elite Iranian Scientist Behind Bars

Kokabee charged with “communicating with a hostile government” and “illegitimate/illegal earnings” is one of the most well known nuclear physics experts in the world. Though many predict that in the coming years he has the potential to become one of the greatest scientists in this field, Kokabee will be deprived of this opportunity as long as he remains in prison. It looks as though Kobabee’s arrest stems from a number of elements within the Intelligence Ministry seeking to eliminate the growth of religious and ethnic minorities within the ranks of the Iranian academic elite.

Omid Kokabee, a member of Iran’s National Elite Foundation, was even honored by the Supreme Leader himself, when he met Khamenei along with a number of other elite academics. Ranked 29th in his university entrance exams, Kokabee was a double major in Physics and Mechanics at Sanati Sharif University.

As a result of his stellar grades, after receiving his bachelors degree, Kokabee was accepted by some of the world’s leading universities of higher education. He received his Masters Degree in Germany and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics with an emphasis on lasers in Spain. Upon completion of his Ph.D. in 2010, Kokabee accepted an offer from the University of Texas, renowned for its Nuclear Physics Program to further his academic credentials.

During his studies, Kokabee had traveled to Iran on numerous occasions in order to visit with his family. However on his last trip, upon leaving Iran in February of 2011, he was arrested at Khomeini International Airport and transferred to Evin prison’s ward 209, a ward under the supervision of the Ministry of Intelligence, where he endured long hours of interrogation. To date, Kokabee has spent more than one month in solitary confinement and another month in prison cells with several cellmates.

During his interrogation process Kokabee was asked why the U.S. government granted him a visa and he responded that he was given a visa because he was a student. The interrogators asked him what he had said when he requested a visa at the U.S. embassy and Kokabee responded that they wanted to know why he sought to continue his education in the U.S. to which he responded that as a result of his great interest in Nuclear Physics and the lack of educational opportunities in Iran, he had sought a student visa. As a result of these responses, the Ministry of Intelligence charged Kokabee with “communicating with a hostile government”. Kokabee was also asked why the university was paying for the cost of his trips to Iran and he explained that the cost of trips and conferences for academia are customarily paid. It was this response that reportedly earned Kokabee the second charge of “illegitimate/illegal earnings”

Additionally, during his interrogation, the interrogators fully aware that Kokabee was unfamiliar with legal terminology and new to interrogations, kept asking him questions and demanding that he provide written responses. Once Kokabee wrote down his responses, his interrogators would take the piece of paper upon which he had written his responses and change the questions in order to derive a crime out of the responses he had provided. This type of immoral and illegal interrogation method has unfortunately also been reported in relation to interrogation processes of many other prisoners. In this same manner, they asked Kokabee to provide written statements regarding his professors at Sharif University and transformed his ordinary responses to questions into supposed confessions, arguing that he had provided this information to a hostile government [United States] and filing a case against him. The interrogators also took advantage of Kokabee’s emotional nature, repeatedly threatening to arrest the rest of his family members in the event that he refused to comply with their demands.

The latest status on Kokabee’s case is as follows: After 88 days behind bars and being informed of the charges against him, Kokabee’s interrogator told him that the final ruling on his case would be rendered by Judge Salavati, one of the judges known for the harshest rulings within Iran’s Revolutionary Court. It looks as though as a result of the Intelligence Ministry’s objective to eliminate the growth of religious and ethnic minorities within the Iranian academia, this 29 year old Iranian will be wasting his youth behind bars at Evin’s ward 350 – this despite the fact that Kokabee always maintained his relationship with his professors at Sharif University, even while studying abroad and has repeatedly collaborated with his Iranian professors when writing scientific articles and research papers that have published in leading academic journals.

Translated By: Banooye Sabz

Source: Kalame