Omid Kokabi Deprived Of Proper Medical Treatment In Evin Prison

HRANA News Agency – Despite recurrent pain and kidney problem of Omid Kokabi, prison authorities refused his request to transfer him to a hospital.

According to the report of Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA), after several days of recurrent pain on Omid Kokabi’s kidney, prison authorities refused his request to transfer him to a hospital outside the prison, although the clinic of the prison does not have sufficient equipment and facilities to address the problems.

Also, according to an informed source any delivery of books in English to Omid Kokabi was banned and he has been denied reading books and articles in his field at the prison.

Omid Kokabi, a doctoral student in physics at the University of Texas at Austin with laser expertise, was arrested at the airport in February 2010 when he was leaving the country. After several months of interrogation and detention, finally he was accused of relationship with a hostile government and doing illegal business and was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

He ranked 39th in the entrance examination and third in Olympiad of chemistry in Iran, he finished his PhD in Barcelona, ​​Spain, and was invited to complete his study at the University of Texas. Shortly after his arrest, in a letter to the Head of the Judiciary that was published by Kalameh website, he wrote; he believes that, “The whole process of arrest, accusations and investigations” were illegal and his confess was under the condition of “Fear, coercion, threats and solitary confinement” and he had confessed things that he is regretful of.

Later in another letter to Sadegh Larijani, Kokabi pointed to the promises made to him and his family to make him work with Highest Security Department in the country, and argued; “tToday that I haven’t done any mistakes and do not have any information of security issues and secret activities by the regime, they are treating me in this way and in fact, my life and my family have been taken hostage. In the future, if I accept to cooperate and because of the job, I gain these information and secrets, how will they treat me, then? And what are they taking hostage from me for their assurance and trusting me?”

He and more than 75 prisoners in the context of the security dissolve project of Ward 350 of Evin prison, have been transferred to the quarantine of ward 7.

Not long ago, eighteen Physics Nobel Prize winners in an open letter to Ayatollah Khamenei demanded freedom of Omid Kokabi, 32-year-old physicist who has been imprisoned since three years and eight months ago in Evin prison.

Omid Kokabee is award-winning of “Scientific Freedom and Responsibility” by the “Progress of Science”. According to the report of “Kalameh”, He is first doctoral student who has been able to gain this (AAAS) Award. The NGO “Progress of Science” in America (AAAS) announced that it was dedicated to Kokabi, because of his courageous stand and enduring imprisonment for refusing to violate the ethics of scientific expertise.

This young scientist has not stopped his scientific and research activities in the prison, including the translation of the book “Atlas of Human Rights” that he and Mehdi Khodaei did in the prison.