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."

Comments

Nothing new here

[s.petry]

Sadly, this is a very common theme with the Iranian Government. Usually this is to get the person on board with them. They get out when they are on-board, and often family members are jailed to be sure that they stay on-board.

As long as crap is in power, crap like this happens. How many brilliant people did Stalin and Hitler kill? So many that we have no way of knowing.

Re:Nothing new here

[Bigby]

It sounds like the trial-less imprisonment here in the US. He's a "terrorist" and doesn't deserve a (fair) trial.

Re:Nothing new here

[artor3]

I was wondering how long it would be before some sheltered fool claimed America was just as bad.

Re:Nothing new here

[crazyjj]

This is so far away from the US that it's laughable

Agreed. In the U.S. he'd never get a trial.

Re:Nothing new here

[girlintraining]

I was wondering how long it would be before some sheltered fool claimed America was just as bad.

Actually, it is somewhat worse.

Re:Nothing new here

[DoofusOfDeath]

I believe you're mistaken in calling the parent a "sheltered fool".

We've suspended Habeus Corpus for anyone branded a terrorist. We've suspended the 4th Amendment any time the NSA wants to wiretap all phone traffic. We torture people. We have secret evidence in trials, which defense attorneys can't see. And National Security Letters can make it a crime to even talk about what the government is up to, even if it's illegal.

So we have a government capable of *exactly* what Iran did to this guy.

And if you're arguing that America isn't as bad because we don't to it as often, there are two points to be made. First, Bigby never talked about how the relative frequency of this kind of trial in the U.S. vs. Iran; just that the U.S. has done these things at least once in recent history. Secondly, given that our our handling of alleged terrorism is secret, none of us has real information on how often the U.S. conducts "trials" of the sort Iran did with this guy.

Re:Nothing new here

[DeadCatX2]

What's the difference between a trial with no evidence, and a trial with classified evidence that the defense is not allowed to see or contest?

What's the difference if you're held in prison for "indefinite detention", and you have never been charged, and you cannot file a habeas corpus petition to determine if the government even has any evidence to justify imprisoning you? At least in this case, there was a trial. That's more than some folks at Gitmo get.

Re:Nothing new here

[DeadCatX2]

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.

Re:Nothing new here

[shutdown -p now]

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.

I went to read about the guy on Wikipedia, and...

"In January 2002, the Supreme Court of Bosnia ruled that there was no evidence to hold the six men, ordered the charges dropped and the men released. American forces, including troops who were part of a 3,000 man American peace-keeping contingent in Bosnia were waiting for the six men upon their release from Bosnia custody, seized them, and transported them to Guantanamo."

What. The. Fuck? Last I checked, Bosnia was an independent sovereign country. How can this kind of crap be pulled off? Did they do it Mossad-style, or what?

Re:Nothing new here

[DeadCatX2]

What the fuck, indeed. You should read Boumediene's op-ed in the NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/my-guantanamo-nightmare.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Also, I forgot a bit about Kurnaz

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/notes-from-a-guantanamo-survivor.html

Despite all this, I looked for ways to feel human. I have always loved animals. I started hiding a piece of bread from my meals and feeding the iguanas that came to the fence. When officials discovered this, I was punished with 30 days in isolation and darkness.

[...]

After two and a half years at Guantánamo, in 2004, I was brought before what officials called a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, at which a military officer said I was an “enemy combatant” because a German friend had engaged in a suicide bombing in 2003 — after I was already at Guantánamo. I couldn’t believe my friend had done anything so crazy but, if he had, I didn’t know anything about it.

A couple of weeks later, I was told I had a visit from a lawyer. They took me to a special cell and in walked an American law professor, Baher Azmy. I didn’t believe he was a real lawyer at first; interrogators often lied to us and tried to trick us. But Mr. Azmy had a note written in Turkish which he had gotten from my mother, and that made me trust him. (My mother found a lawyer in my hometown in Germany who heard that lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights represented Guantánamo detainees; the center assigned Mr. Azmy my case.) He did not believe the evidence against me and quickly discovered that my “suicide bomber” friend was, in fact, alive and well in Germany.

This is the kind of shit you see in movies (movies like Rendition, which was based on Khalid el-Masri's experience). It's almost hard to believe that my government can do this sort of thing to innocent people.

Re:Nothing new here

[girlintraining]

Before you say "but but but but" I'll ask you to volunteer for the Military and go see for yourself.

Couldn't. Gay. Curiously, people who chant "death to america!" are a bit more accepting regarding military service, though it usually ends with a bang.

Watch a few of your friends die and get hit by a bullet or two.

I didn't have to serve in the military to see that. I've been shot myself... twice.

Lets see how you react when you capture someone and they spit in your face and tell you they will hunt down your whole family and kill them.

I can't say I ever captured someone, but I've had people spit in my face and tell me they will hunt down my whole family and kill them. Again, gay. Also, small town.

Try helping out someone asking for help and watching them kill a few innocents, and then yell "he did it!".

Okay, at this point, I have to ask... what the fuck are you getting at? Is your justification here that two wrongs make a right? That it's okay to kill people, as long as it's for the right reasons? Collateral damage? Where are you going with this... or are you just rattling off the many inhumane things human beings are capable of when told by an authority to do them?

We torture and kill innocent people; and it's not just foreigners, it's our own citizens. Our fear mongering leaders want show trials for their re-election so badly they throw people to the wolves. The FBI is busy manufacturing terrorists just so they can claim credit for taking them down. And you're acting like we shouldn't be ashamed? That we should just accept it? Are you truly that jaded?

But in a war, when you have your ass on the line 24/7/365 and you watch people die..

You don't kill others to protect your way of life, only to come home and kill more people who's crime is living that way of life.

There are countless Occupy people that have been arrested and detained without bail or trial for weeks.

Yes, I know. I was there. And no bail or trial for a couple weeks is not the same thing as never having a trial, being disappeared, having the government deny your family, friends, or anyone access to you, never seeing a lawyer, permanently. That's what we've legalized in the past few years; and it goes against everything we have sent generations of young men overseas to die for.

We should be ashamed.

Re:Nothing new here

[DeadCatX2]

Yeah, I know, right?

It's not like there was a law passed that allowed the executive to hold prisoners indefinitely. (NDAA)

It's not like there were multiple inmates from Gitmo who have Supreme Court rulings bearing their name. (Hamdi, Hamdan, and Boumediene)

Online Petition

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh shit. A fucking online petition. Those Iranian guys a really wishing that they hadn't fucked with that grad student.

Not Quite "His" Trial

[eldavojohn]

and refused to speak at his trial

From the Nature article

Judge Abolghasem Salavati of Branch 15 of Tehran's Revolution Court — who is famous for his harsh sentences — tried 10 to 15 people in the same trial, under the collective charge of collaborating with Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad.

Hardly "his" trial now, wasn't it? From the sound of it, it was just 10-15 students they all accused of the same thing with some of them (like Sina Zahiri) confessing in order to reduce their sentences. Of course, Zahiri's accusation is contact with Mojahedin-e Khalgh Organization (completely unrelated to the Mossad). So now that Zahiri has confessed, Iran has "evidence" that they can now use to justify counter attacks or assassinations or arrests or whatever.

I'm sure in Kokabee's case, he'd have a lighter sentence if he just said that Israel is doing all the stuff of which they accuse him. Because then Iran has evidence to start some international shit (by the way, I am by no means claiming Israel has no such operations inside Iran).

Re:Is Iran crazy?

[Opportunist]

If they next imprison a biologist specializing in cold blooded, carnivorous sea fauna, we know what's going on!

Brain Drain in Iran

[eldavojohn]

Iran is desperate to plug that hole, but frankly they're heavily outmatched and being sanctioned and sabotaged every step of the way.

If you're imposing strict social codes with ridiculously harsh laws while trying to compete with super powers, you're going to have a bad time.

It's true the USSR and US played a big part in turning Iran into the screw up it is today but at some point the people have gotta turn it around if they don't want to end up completely like North Korea. Smart people don't want to live in places where smart people are bothered and executed. Smart people also can't be told where to live -- they're smart and they figure out ways around that.

Always happens quick

[Sycraft-fu]

There are a lot of very narcissistic people on Slashdot and any discussion that isn't about America they seem to need to find a way to redirect it to the US as soon as they can. I can never be a discussion about civil rights in another nation, they have to try and steer the debate right back around to America so they can do more whining and make more things about themselves.

It is extremely annoying, and precisely as expected for this site.

Re:Queue "But the US..." comment in 3... 2... 1...

[Dave Emami]

Umm... no. I'm pointing out that when the US gets accused of something bad, the comments are about the US, and when some other country is accused of something bad, the comments are... about the US. There were several privacy or "Your Rights Online" posts dealing specifically with the US within the last week. Did the comments immediately stray into discussion of Iran? No, nor should they have. Same thing goes here. There's a person -- a tech guy, one of our own -- getting stomped on. How about some sympathy for him? Likewise with the discussion of Saeed Malekpour a few months ago: a programmer is at risk of being executed because of source code sharing (something rather dear to the hearts of a lot of people on Slashdot), and a major chunk of the comments are "but in the US etc. etc."