GUILTY Iran - Chinese-American, Xiyue Wang, Princeton University grad student sentenced to prison, Aug 2016

Iranian authorities allege that Xiyue Wang, a Chinese American who was a student at Princeton, copied thousands of pages of digital documents and also paid large sums of money for archive material. He is also accused of trying to access confidential sections of Tehran libraries.

<snip> http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/0...inese-american-researcher-jailed-in-iran.html


Wang was arrested on Aug. 8, 2016 and is accused of passing confidential information about Iran to the U.S. State Department, Princeton’s Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies, the Harvard Kennedy School and the British Institute of Persian Studies, Mizan Online said.

[...]

He was expecting to continue his research in Russia and needed to get as much work done in Iran as he could before taking up a fellowship there, Kotkin said.

That included scanning large volumes of documents that he could access later — something Kotkin described as “normal, standard scholarly practice.” The documents he accessed were roughly 100 years old, the professor said.

<snip> https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...53480672286_story.html?utm_term=.c7ed4e42a22f


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Wang was sentenced to 10 years in prison but will appeal. I doubt that (an appeal) means much in Iran, though.

"Unjustly imprisoned": Wife of Princeton researcher held in Iran speaks out

In her first comments on his case, Wang's wife Hua Qu described her husband as "one of the kindest, most thoughtful, and most loving men I have ever known." She said the couple has a 4-year-old son.

"Our son has missed his father for more than a year of his young life, as my husband has been unjustly imprisoned for espionage that I know he did not and never would commit," she said in a statement distributed by Princeton. "We fervently hope that the Iranian authorities will release him soon so that he can return home to his young family."

Princeton has been working quietly with Wang's family, the U.S. government, lawyers and others to secure his release, and hopes he will be released on appeal.

<snip> http://www.cbsnews.com/news/xiyue-wang-wife-hua-qu-urges-iran-release-chinese-american-custody/


Academic Adviser Of U.S. Student Jailed In Iran: 'Everything He Did Was Normal'

Xiyue Wang, 37, is pursuing a Ph.D. in Eurasian history, studying local government in predominantly Muslim regions during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Stephen Kotkin, Wang's advisor at Princeton, says Wang came well-prepared for an extremely ambitious thesis topic.

[...]

"Everything he did is normal — absolutely everything he did is normal, standard practice for scholars in this region and elsewhere," Kotkin says.

[...]

Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, says materials "dealing with matters going back to the 19th century would be a very different matter than, say, Iran's ongoing nuclear program."

<snip> http://wrvo.org/post/academic-adviser-us-student-jailed-iran-everything-he-did-was-normal

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My understanding from the first article is Wang could not access certain historical documents for his research because they are in an area accessible only by Iranian citizens. So Wang hired an Iranian citizen to photocopy the documents for him.

Somewhat reminds me of the Otto Warmbier case. I hope this has a better outcome.

U.S. issues $20 million reward for American missing in Iran

The senior officials used the anniversary to call on Tehran to release all missing and wrongfully detained Americans, including Levinson, Xiyue Wang, Siamak Namazi and others.

June 2020:
Released From Iranian Prison, U.S. Student Xiyue Wang Says He Was Held As A 'Hostage'
Released in December 2019.