Appeal Court Upheld Omid Kokabi’s Imprisonment Sentence
10-January-2015
Category: Students
Breathing in Confinement – Appeal court has upheld the 10-year-imprisonment sentence for Omid Kokabi, Nuclear Physics PhD student at the University of “Texas” in “Austin” who refused to help in Iranian military projects.
According to the report of “Breathing in Confinement”, his sentence was confirmed by branch 54 of Tehran’s Appeal Court.
Mr. Saeid Khalili, Omid Kukabi’s attorney, referring to the Mohseni Ezhei’s remarks about his client, published the approved court verdict with a scan of the issued statement in his Facebook page.
On 5th January, ISNA news agency in a report about the news conference of Iranian judiciary spokesman has reported his response in this regard to a question by a journalist who had asked referring to Omid Kokabi’s approved 10-year-imprisonment sentence by an equal court as follow: “Based on the procedure when a court verdict is broken, an equal court will consider the case and if the court verdict is approved, then that case will go again to Supreme Court and if they cannot issue a verdict, then Supreme Court’s Insist General Assembly is formed and they attempt to issue an insist court verdict.”
However, in late September, Supreme Court had accepted his appeal and according to Islamic Republic’s law, when an appeal is accepted, another branch cannot confirm previous court’s verdict, rather they should issue a new court verdict also, they should consider Supreme Court’s opinions.
Omid Kukabi, Iranian elite 30-year-old, graduate student at Sharif University and a PhD student in nuclear physics at the University of Texas, America, was arrested in Imam Khomeini airport, on 30th January 2011, when he was leaving the country.
After 15 months of temporary detention, on Sunday 13th May 2012, in a court presided by the Judge of security cases, Abolghasem Salvati, he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.