UN urges Iran to free Princeton student

A U.N. rights panel has issued a strongly worded opinion calling on Iran to immediately release an American scholar imprisoned two years ago while doing historical research that the Iranian authorities had approved. The opinion, by the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, said Xiyue Wang, a graduate student at Princeton University, had been wrongly accused of espionage, secretly tried and imprisoned. There was no immediate response by Iranian government officials to the U.N. opinion. While not binding, the opinion cast an unflattering light on Iran’s opaque judiciary, which has never provided evidence to explain precisely why Wang was arrested.