An American academic who was imprisoned in Iran for 1,216 days is suing Princeton University, saying they sent him to study and then left him there without any support.

Xiyue Wang says the university officials did not help him, and even tried to keep his wife from publicizing his case following his arrest on bogus charges of spying for the United States.

Princeton lawyers and administrators urged him not to seek refuge in the Swiss embassy in Tehran after he began to fear for his safety so that the university could maintain its political relations with Iran, Wang alleges in his lawsuit.

He has identified Princeton scholar Seyyed Hossein Mousavian, who is sympathetic to the Iranian regime, claiming that he stymied efforts to free him from prison.

Mousavian – now a visiting research scholar at Princeton, was Tehran’s ambassador to Germany when four Iranian dissidents were assassinated at Berlin's Mykonos restaurant in 1992.

He served in a variety of positions Iranian diplomatic position. He attended the funeral service of Qasem Soleimani, the IRGC commander who was killed by American forces last year.

Xiyue Wang was arrested in Iran in August 2016 and sentenced to 10 years in the notorious Evin Prison. He was freed in December 2019 in exchange for Iranian scientist Masoud Soleimani, who was imprisoned in the US, for attempting to export biological materials to Iran without authorization.