Posted on behalf of Michele Catanzaro.
Omid Kokabee, a physics student at Texas University who has been imprisoned in Iran since February, faced the first hearing of his trial this morning. Kokabee denied all charges against him, during a one-and-a-half-hour-long hearing closed to the public, according to Kokabee’s lawyer, Saeed Khalili. However, Khalili’s defence presentation was postponed for lack of time until a date still to be announced.
“Omid spoke strongly and did it well: he said he has not done any of the things he is accused of,” Khalili wrote in an e-mail to Nature after the hearing. According to Khalili, Kokabee was not allowed to speak directly but was ordered to write his answers on paper. “I cannot make any prediction, but I think it will not go well, because the trial was very harsh and heavy,” adds Khalili.
If Judge Abolghasem Salavati finds Kokabee guilty, he could face a sentence ranging from several years in prison to the death penalty.
Kokabee (pictured), a 29-year-old Iranian, moved from the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Spain, where he conducted his graduate studies, to the University of Texas at Austin in August 2010, to study for a PhD in experimental physics, specializing in the design of tunable lasers.
Last February, he was arrested by the Iranian security services upon leaving Iran after a visit to his family, and accused of “communicating with a hostile government” and “illegal earnings”. He was held in Evin prison, where he faced isolation and was forced to sign declarations under psychological pressure, according to an open letter from Kokabee to the Iranian minister of justice Sadeq Larijani. Khalili says has not been allowed to speak to his client since his detention, not even this morning in court.
Since Nature first highlighted Kokabee’s case in May, scientific organizations, including the Committee of Concerned Scientists (CCS), the American Physical Society and a group of four international optics organizations, have written to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asserting his innocence or asking for a fair trial. The CCS has also set up an online petition.
Image credit: Omid Kokabee