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.
