A group of demonstrators gathered Wednesday on the RLM bridge to raise awareness for Omid Kokabee, a former UT physics graduate student who has been imprisoned in Iran for almost four years.
The group gathered in the shade of the building Kokabee would have returned to for class after visiting his family in Iran. Physics professor Herbert Berk spoke at the demonstration about the circumstances of Kokabee’s incarceration.
“It’s hard to understand what it was, and there was no trial to really shed any light because, at the trial, the judge looked at him and declared him guilty and put him in jail for 10 years,” Berk said.
Berk serves as chairman for the Committee on International Freedom of Scientists, an organization that fights for imprisoned scientists. He said the reasons for Kokabee’s imprisonment are unusual.
“He was declared innocent of some of the [original] charges, but then they convicted him of conspiring with the United States government and getting illegal income, which is, as far as we can tell, the income from being a TA here,” Berk said.
Berk said Kokabee has lost weight and has come down with different medical afflictions while in the Iranian prison system.
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