Professor Mehran Mostafavi, who is head of the Physical Chemistry Lab of France, recently saw that an Iranian - Omid Kokabi - had authored an article he was reading. Excited to see an article from an Iranian, he looked at the address to see which university he was working in. He was stunned to see that the address ended: 'Evin Prison, Unit 308'. It turns out that Omid Kokabi had sent the results of his research on a laser system, which he had conducted while at a research centre in Spain, from prison. Mehran said that it sorely reminded him of one of Khomeini’s famous statements that ‘our prisons are universities.’
This is a matter of both pride and anger. It is a matter of pride that a political prisoner tries to continue his scientific work, and a matter of ferocious anger that the country is ruled by a dictatorial regime which imprisons scientists and academics for their political beliefs. God knows how many other Iranian scholars are in Evin and other prisons all over the country.
Reading this case made me think again of Maryam Mirzakhani. I asked myself what would have happened if she, like Omid, would have ended up in prison? This made me more eager to suggest that Maryam condition her return to Iran upon the release of all political prisoners.
Here is the abstract of Omid’s article:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1403.6066<http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Farxiv.org%2Fabs%2F1403.6066&h=rAQEud6WM&s=1>
And here is the article:
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1403/1403.6066.pdf