Tehran, Iran (NBCNC) – An Iranian Judiciary official said that an American student from Princeton University was arrested in Iran and has been sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of spying for the United States.
The graduate student in history vanished months ago in Iran, but it was only yesterday that the ultra-hardline Judiciary announced his arrest and sentencing.
Now, although the Judiciary didn’t mention him by name or nationality, a website run by them named him as 37-year-old Xiyue Wang and labeled him as “one of those American infiltrators” who had a web of connections with American and British intelligence.
They had described him as fluent in Persian and that he had digitally archived 4,500-pages of Iranian documents and had done super-confidential research for the U.S. State Department, the Harvard-Kennedy School, and the British Institute of Persian Studies.
The State Department has called on Iran to release all foreign citizens it’s holding unjustly so they can return to their families.
Princeton University has also released a statement asking for the immediate release of Mr. Wang and saying that they are working with his family.
This case adds to a long list of American citizens, mostly Iranian-American dual nationals that have been imprisoned in Iran over the years on similar charges, many of them remain in Iranian prisons.
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