The physics PhD candidate at the University of Texas in Austin has been imprisoned on charges of conspiracy, reports Kaleme, an online magazine associated with the opposition movement. The University of Texas confirms he has failed to return to the campus.
“He returned home to visit his parents for Christmas break and was never able to return,” said John Keto, a graduate advisor for physics. Kokabee was reportedly arrested at Imam Khomeini International Airport, but reports vary as to whether this was at the beginning or end of his visit.
“We assume he’s been detained because he’s an atomic molecular physicist and works with lasers, which are sometimes used in power generation and weapons research,” says the graduate coordinator for the physics department, Matt Ervin.
Keto notes, however, that Kokabee “has nothing to do with nuclear physics” and had not yet begun doing research as part of his PhD studies. His past experiences were in non-linear optics and manipulating light through electrical fields.
Unconfirmed claims by the online Green Voice of Freedom suggest Kokabee, 29, is under arrest for “communicating with a hostile government” and “illegitimate earnings,” charges that are based on the fact that the University of Texas had paid for his travel expenses. He is reportedly being held at Evin Prison and was in solitary confinement for a month.
According to Kalame, Kokabee, a Sunni Turkmen, may have been arrested in an effort to stymie the academic prosperity of ethnic and religious minorities in Iran. “He never was involved in political issues,” says an Iranian colleague living in Spain.
Another friend hypothesizes Kokobee may have aroused suspicions by traveling to Iran at least four times in 2010. Meanwhile, “many of our Iranian students are extremely nervous about what will happen if they try to return,” says Keto of Iranians on the University of Texas Austin campus.
A 2005 graduate of Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Kokabee was 29th in the Konkoor examination, the national university entrance examination taken by tens of thoudands of high schoool graduates in Iran.
He worked for several Iranian companies, including the National Iranian Oil Company, before leaving the country in 2007. From then until 2010 when he moved to Austin, he was a research assistant at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona, Spain, studying lasers and optical parametric oscillators, pump laser beams that can change photons to different wavelengths.
