Iranian Physics Student From UT Gets 10 Years In Jail For Spying

scibri writes "Omid Kokabee, a laser physics graduate student from the University of Texas who has been imprisoned in Tehran for the past 15 months, was sentenced to 10 years in jail on Sunday for allegedly conspiring with foreign countries against Iran. Kokabee was arrested in February 2011 while on a trip home, and charged with 'communicating with a hostile government' (i.e. Israel) and 'illegal earnings.' He has consistently denied the charges, and refused to speak at his trial, where no evidence against him was presented. Several international science groups, including the American Physical Society, have spoken up in his defense, and an online petition has been set up in support."

Re:Puts things in perspective

[Hatta]

We have a LONG way to go before the West descends into such a farce.

Not as long as Cannabis is illegal. If the US can maintain the illusion that Cannabis(which is less harmful than most OTC drugs) is so dangerous that we have to lock people in cages for multiple decades just for growing it, what can't they do?

Not a lot of sympathy

[petsounds]

It's difficult to glean from the articles, but it seems Kokabee is not an American citizen, but an Iranian citizen who was attending an American graduate school. The act of going to an American school was the first risky move, both to his own safety but that of his family. The Iranian government knew he was attending an American school and simply waited for the appropriate time to use him as a pawn. Did he really think he was going to be able to associate himself with America and not end up being used for propaganda purposes by the Iranian government? He's a young kid so maybe he didn't think about it, but his parents should have.

I do sympathize that he felt he had to risk everything in order to get a good education in the field of his choice, but he put himself in a very risky position.

Re:Nothing new here

[DeadCatX2]

What the fuck, indeed. You should read Boumediene's op-ed in the NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/my-guantanamo-nightmare.html?_r=1&ref=opinion [nytimes.com]

Also, I forgot a bit about Kurnaz

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/notes-from-a-guantanamo-survivor.html [nytimes.com]

Despite all this, I looked for ways to feel human. I have always loved animals. I started hiding a piece of bread from my meals and feeding the iguanas that came to the fence. When officials discovered this, I was punished with 30 days in isolation and darkness.

[...]

After two and a half years at Guantánamo, in 2004, I was brought before what officials called a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, at which a military officer said I was an “enemy combatant” because a German friend had engaged in a suicide bombing in 2003 — after I was already at Guantánamo. I couldn’t believe my friend had done anything so crazy but, if he had, I didn’t know anything about it.

A couple of weeks later, I was told I had a visit from a lawyer. They took me to a special cell and in walked an American law professor, Baher Azmy. I didn’t believe he was a real lawyer at first; interrogators often lied to us and tried to trick us. But Mr. Azmy had a note written in Turkish which he had gotten from my mother, and that made me trust him. (My mother found a lawyer in my hometown in Germany who heard that lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights represented Guantánamo detainees; the center assigned Mr. Azmy my case.) He did not believe the evidence against me and quickly discovered that my “suicide bomber” friend was, in fact, alive and well in Germany.

This is the kind of shit you see in movies (movies like Rendition, which was based on Khalid el-Masri's experience). It's almost hard to believe that my government can do this sort of thing to innocent people.