Iran jails scientist for refusing to help with Uranium-enrichment
Omid Kokabee is an iranian scientist. He worked at the University of Texas since 2010, in the development of new lasers, and regularly flew back to Iran to visit his family. No problems.
In February 2011 he was suddenly arrested and charged with communicating with a hostile government (the US) and receiving illegal earnings. He was sentenced in a show-trial in May 2011 to 10 years in prison. Why a show-trial? The prosecutors had no evidence. Omid Kokabee claimed, his arrest was intended to pressure him into working for the nuclear program of Iran.
Since then, various scientific organizations have launched petitions to free Kokabee and a retrial is set.
Now, you might ask, why Omid Kokabee? Why would they want exactly this guy?
Because he was developing a CO2-laser in Austin. And this kind of laser is used in a brand-new Uranium-enrichment method called SILEX (separation of isotopes by laser excitation).
The details of SILEX are secret, of course, but it revolves around the fact that Uranium-hexafluorid-molecules (produced by dissolving Uranium in massive amounts of hydrofluoric acid???) have a different spectrum, depending on which isotope the Uranium-atom is. With a perfectly tuned laser, you can choose to excite molecules with the desired isotope.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omid_Kokabee
http://www.iranhumanrights.org/2014/10/retrial-kokabee/
http://www.nature.com/news/iranian-says-he-was-jailed-for-refusing-to-engage-in-military-research-1.12884
