Published in Physics World, 1 Nov 2013
A physicist imprisoned in Iran while on a break from his PhD studies in the US has been awarded a human-rights prize. Omid Kokabee, who had been based at the University of Texas in Austin, has been given the Andrei Sakharov Prize from the American Physical Society (APS) for “his courage in refusing to use his physics knowledge to work on projects that he deemed harmful to humanity, in the face of extreme physical and psychological pressure”.
Kokabee, who was working towards a PhD in optics at Austin, was arrested at a Tehran airport while on vacation in Iran from the US in early 2011. He was charged with receiving “illegal earnings” and “communicating with a hostile government”, and detained at the notorious Evin Prison in north-west Tehran. In May 2012 he was sentenced to 10 years behind bars. […]
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