Amnesty International Human Rights Now Blog
May 18, 2016 at 10:19 AM
It didn’t have to be this way. A promising young physicist, beloved by his colleagues, lies in a hospital bed with just one kidney left.
The other was removed because cancer had spread to the point where it
was no longer salvageable. If he had only been permitted to get the
treatment he needed earlier, he might still have his kidney today.
Omid Kokabee has already suffered far too much. The 33-year
old scientist has been in either prison or the hospital since he was
arrested in Iran more than five years ago in January 2011.
After a flawed and unfair trial in an Iranian Revolutionary Court, he
was sentenced to ten years in prison on absurd charges of communicating
with a hostile government (ostensibly the United States). His crime? He
had studied Physics in Barcelona and was doing doctoral research at the
University of Texas, thereby making him a target of the Iranian security
apparatus continually on the look-out for those they can claim to be traitors lured by western governments
to subvert and undermine the Iranian government. Further, he was
recognized as so talented, that the Iranian government had tried to recruit him to participate in that country’s nuclear program.
Omid Kokabee had refused, as he intended to use his knowledge for
peaceful purposes, including investigating the potential of lasers for
new medical applications.
