The Atlantic

The Princeton Student Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison in Iran

Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-born U.S. citizen, was detained last summer on charges of espionage while conducting scholarly research.
Source: Via Princeton University

An Iranian court has sentenced an American graduate student to 10 years in prison for spying, the latest case of a U.S. citizen accused of espionage by the Islamic republic.

Xiyue Wang, a Chinese-born U.S. citizen, was arrested last summer while conducting research in Iran for his doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, where he was a graduate student in history, said. Fars, a semiofficial Iranian news Mizan Online, a news agency affiliated with Iran’s judiciary, as saying Wang pursued espionage “through the cover of being a researcher.” Mizan, Fars said, reported that Wang was “gathering secret and top secret [intelligence]” for the U.S. State Department, Harvard Kennedy School, and the British Institute of Persian Studies. He was accused, the Fars report said, of “infiltrating Iran’s national archive and building a 4,500-page digital archive” for “the world’s biggest anti-Iran spying organization.” It did not elaborate.

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