Omid Kokabee (Persian: امید کوکبی; born 1982) is an Iranian experimental laser physicist at the University of Texas at Austin who was arrested in Iran after returning from the United States to visit his family on January 30, 2011.
He entered Sharif University of Technology in 2000, and completed a double major undergraduate program in Applied Physics and Mechanical Engineering.
[13] Kokabee attended trial before a judge Abolqasem Salavati with a group of 10 to 15 people in the same session, under the collective charge of collaborating with Israeli authorities.
Since 2007, several U.S.-Iranian dual nationals or Americans of Iranian ancestry have faced arrest, imprisonment or criminal charges when visiting Iran (examples being Radio Farda correspondent Parnaz Azima, Roxana Saberi, Ali Shakeri,[15] Esha Momeni, Haleh Esfandiari, and Kian Tajbakhsh).
Omid and another inmate, Mehdi Khodaei, translated the book, The Atlas of Human Rights by Andrew Fagan in Persian and made it available to the public on the internet for download in 2015.
This does not amount to a full release since he can still be brought back to prison for the remaining three years of his sentence should the judiciary decide to revoke his parole.
"[18] In July 2013, a meeting took place in Barcelona (where Kokabee obtained his master's degree) entitled "Knowledge in jail: Why are there hundreds of scientists in the prisons of the world?"
[4] On November 16, 2013, Amnesty International sponsored an event in Washington, DC, entitled "Iran: Silencing Scientists and Squelching Scholarship."
The panel discussion was billed as a dialogue on how to address the repression of academic freedom in Iran; featuring the case of Omid Kokabee.
[5] On October 27, 2014, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the largest general science association in the world, selected Kokabee as the recipient of the 2014 Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award "for his courageous stand and willingness to endure imprisonment rather than violate his moral stance that his scientific expertise not be used for destructive purposes and for his efforts to provide hope and education to fellow prisoners".