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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."
Your characterization of American justice is incorrect. You seem to be talking about the dangerously-close-to-entrapment behavior that the FBI engages in, cooking up plots and luring idiots into taking the bait, and then waving them around as evidence that the FBI is protecting us.
What about foreign nationals like Kahlid el-Masri? He was some innocent German guy who the CIA had kidnapped. The CIA agent who recommended his detention wasn't punished; she was promoted!
Or Maher Arar? Kidnapped and rendered to Syria for torture. The Canadian government paid him restitution for their part in his detention, rendition, and torture. But when he tried to sue the US? Nope, sorry, State Secrets.
Or perhaps Lakhdar Boumediene? He was a member of the Red Crescent (think of it like the Muslim version of the Red Cross) He was held for 7 years until a federal judge finally ruled that the government had no evidence. When one side of his nose was broken, US personnel force fed him (twice a day) through the other nostril. Sometimes they missed his stomach and the tube went into his lungs instead. Oops.
Murat Kurnaz? Another German, held for five years in Gitmo. There's a DoD memo stating that he was cleared for release about one year about his detention, and yet he languished for four more years anyway.
What about the Uighurs? Everyone admits they aren't guilty of any crimes, and yet many are still stuck in Gitmo after nearly a decade.
These are ALL perfectly fucking innocent human beings, who were never charged or tried despite spending years and years in detention, sometimes almost as long as this student has been sentenced. There was no plot. There was hardly an investigation.
I say again, at least this student was given a sham trial before being imprisoned. That sham trial is more than any of those folks I listed above got before they were imprisoned and tortured. The difference between a sham trial with no evidence and no trial at all is in practice negligible.
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