The response was swift and violent. Plainclothes officers of the Ministry of Intelligence and the paramilitary Basij militia arrested Pegahan and his colleagues. He was not charged with violating labor codes; he was charged with national security offenses. After a closed-door trial widely condemned by international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, Pegahan was convicted of “moharebeh” (enmity against God) and “assembly and collusion against national security.” He was sentenced to death, later commuted to a long prison term—initially 14 years, then extended to 19 years, plus additional sentences for “propaganda against the system.”
Saeed Pegahan is an accomplished atomic physicist specializing in quantum optics, many-body systems, and high-precision quantum sensing. His career spans significant academic achievements and pioneering research in quantum technologies. Academic Background saeed pegahan
: His work involves engineering "energy-space lattices" to study collective quantum dynamics and information scrambling in complex quantum systems. The response was swift and violent