Nature:
A physics student at the University of Texas at Austin has been
unjustly imprisoned in Iran since February, according to his
colleagues. Omid Kokabee is an atomic molecular physicist who
works with lasers and previously worked in nonlinear optics,
but he has nothing to do with nuclear physics, write Michele
Catanzaro and Eugenie Samuel Reich for
Nature. He returned home to visit his parents over the
winter break, and never returned. According to
Kaleme
, an online magazine affiliated with the Iranian political
opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Kokabee was arrested as
he tried to catch his flight back to the US from Imam Khomeini
International Airport and was brought to Evin prison in Tehran,
where he was placed in solitary confinement and interrogated.
Nature has not been able to verify these claims.
Kokabee graduated in 2005 from Sharif University of Technology
in Tehran, worked for several companies in Iran, and in 2007
moved to the Institute of Photonic Sciences (IFCO) in
Barcelona, Spain, to work as a research assistant. He moved to
Austin in August 2010 for his PhD studies at the University of
Texas.
