Omid Kokabi Granted Medical Leave on 500 Million Toman Bail

Reports indicate that Omid Kokabi, a PhD student in physics at the University of Texas at Austin, has been granted medical leave for two weeks on a bail of 500 million tomans. Kokabi, who has been imprisoned in Evin Prison in Tehran for over five years without leave, lost one of his kidneys on April 20 due to advanced kidney cancer. An informed source told the weekly publication 'Nature' that Kokabi left Sina Hospital in Tehran, where he was hospitalized for kidney cancer treatment, on Wednesday and is expected to continue his treatment at home. This source added that Kokabi's medical leave can be extended every two weeks and is likely to last from one to three months. According to the report, there is hope that Kokabi's medical leave will be extended further. Saeed Khalili, Kokabi's lawyer, stated last month regarding his client's medical condition to ILNA: 'The cancerous mass along with his right kidney has been removed, but it is still unclear whether the cancer has spread to other parts of his body, and the pathology results have not yet come back. However, according to the treating physician, his future life must be accompanied by careful medical supervision and in an environment free from stress and psychological pressure, which the prison environment can definitely pose a danger and problems for him.' Previously, Amnesty International warned against Kokabi's return to prison, stating that given this physicist's need for special post-operative care and continued cancer treatment, his return to prison would severely endanger his life. Omid Kokabi was a simultaneous student of mechanical engineering and physics at Sharif University of Technology in Iran before going to the U.S. for higher education. He was a PhD student in physics with a focus on lasers at the University of Texas when he traveled to Iran in 2009 to visit his family but was arrested upon his return to the U.S. Kokabi was sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges such as 'collaborating with foreign governments' and 'earning illicit income.' In a letter from Evin Prison, he stated that he was pressured by the Islamic Republic's security agencies to cooperate on a nuclear project and became a victim of refusing to cooperate. While serving his prison sentence, Kokabi developed kidney cancer, and doctors had to completely remove one of his kidneys from his body.