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| Omid Kokabee Turkmen Scientist talant |
AMNESY INTERNATIONAL: The action at the Iran UN Mission in NY
(Third Avenue between 40th and 41st) to deliver the petitions and
letters calling for Omid Kokabee’s release will be on October
28–probably about 10:30 AM. I will keep you posted on plans but I hope
you can join us there! I think we have good momentum going now, with the
publicity around the 28 (actually now it’s 29) Nobel Physics Laureates
letters to Iran’s Supreme Leader calling for his release, and the Maz
Jobrani video in which he calls for his release. We also received good
news that Iran’s Supreme Court has voided the original ten-year sentence
and is reconsidering it. So now is definitely time for the final push
to get us across the finish line! Dr. Ahmed Shaheed, the Special
Rapporteur for the Situation of Human Rights in Iran is planning on
delivering his official report to the UN later on that day. Iran’s
Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council commences a few
days later in Geneva. So the time is right. Hope to see you there!
Thanks.
Media Advisory/Photo Opportunity/October 28 Event
For Immediate Release
Amnesty International
Wednesday October 22, 2014
Contact: Amanda Simon, 212-633-4162, asimon@aiusa.org; Hadi Ghaemi 917-669-5996, hadighaemi@iranhumanrights.org; Eugene Chudnovsky (Committee of Concerned Scientists), 917-689-2236,eugene.chudnovsky@lehman.cuny.edu; Michele Irwin, (301) 209-3237, irwin@aps.org
31 Nobel Physics Prize
Laureates Join Thousands of Activists to Call for the Release of Iranian
Physicist and Prisoner of Conscience Omid Kokabee
Delegation to Present Stack of Thousands of Petitions and Letters to the Iran UN Mission
(New York) – A delegation consisting of Amnesty International, the Committee of Concerned Scientists,
and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran will deliver
thousands of petitions and letters collected by these organizations and
the American Physical Society calling for the release of Omid Kokabee to
the Iran UN Mission in New York on Tuesday October 28 at 10:30 AM at
622 Third Avenue, between 40th and 41st Streets.
Among the thousands of signatures on both online and paper petitions,
are letters to Iran’s Supreme Leader from 31 recipients of the Nobel
Prize in Physics between the years 1972 and 2013.
Members of the delegation will
make remarks on the plaza outside of the Iran UN Mission and display the
letters and petitions to the public before delivering them to the
Mission.
The petition delivery is a
culmination of efforts on behalf of Omid Kokabee since his arrest in
January 2011. Omid Kokabee is a brilliant young (32 years old) physicist
specializing in laser optics and photonics. He was doing post-graduate
work at the University of Texas, Austin when he was arrested in Iran
during a trip home to visit his family. He has been in detention ever
since. He was sentenced to ten years in prison after he was convicted on
unsubstantiated charges of “communicating with a hostile government”
and receiving “illegitimate funds” following an unfair trial in a
Revolutionary Court in Tehran. Amnesty International considers Omid
Kokabee to be a prisoner of conscience, who has been imprisoned solely
due to his refusal to engage in military research for the Islamic
Republic of Iran and as a result of spurious charges related to his
legitimate scholarly ties with academic institutions outside of Iran.
Omid Kokabee was awarded the
Andrei Sakharov Prize from the American Physical Society for “his
courage in refusing to use his physics knowledge to work on projects
that he deemed harmful to humanity, in the face of extreme physical and
psychological pressure.” He has also been suffering from a number of
serious health problems that have not been treated.
The timing of the petition
delivery is critical: following a concerted effort on his behalf by a
number of organizations and thousands of activists around the world,
Iran’s Supreme Court recently vacated the ten-year sentence and is now
going to review the case against Omid Kokabee. October 28 also marks the
official presentation to the United Nations of the report of the UN
Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran, Dr. Ahmed
Shaheed. Iran’s human rights record will also be closely scrutinized
when its Universal Periodic Review in the UN Human Rights Council in
Geneva is conducted starting October 31.
The delegation to the Iran UN
Mission is calling for Omid Kokabee to be immediately and
unconditionally released so that he can receive urgent medical treatment
for his numerous and severe health problems.
The letter to Iran’s Supreme
Leader calling for the release of Omid Kokabee is endorsed by the
following 31 Nobel laureates in physics: Leon Neil Cooper (1972), Brian
David Josephson (1973), Anthony Hewish (1974), Burton Richter (1976),
Samuel Chao Chung Ting (1976), Philip W. Anderson (1977), Arno Allan
Penzias (1978), Sheldon Lee Glashow (1979), James Cronin (1980),
Nicolaas Bloembergen (1981), Klaus von Klitzing (1985), Jack Steinberger
(1988), David. M. Lee (1996), Douglas D. Osheroff (1996), Claude
Cohen-Tannoudji (1997), William D. Phillips (1997), Daniel Tsui (1998),
Eric A. Cornell (2001), Wolfgang Ketterle (2001), Masatoshi Koshiba
(2002), Alexei Abrikosov (2003), Anthony Leggett (2003), David Politzer
(2004), David J. Gross (2004), John Hall (2005), John Mather (2006),
Toshihide Maskawa (2008), Konstantin Novoselov (2010), Andre Geim
(2010), David J. Wineland (2012) and Peter W. Higgs (2013).
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