NEW IRAN LEADER FOUND OUT

It's a very old, predictable, and tired formula.

No evidence yet Iran leader involved in 1979 siege

Fri Jul 1, 2005 7:53 PM BST



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Friday it has unearthed no evidence so far to support assertions by former American captives that Iranian President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was involved in the 1979 siege of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Several Americans who were held have said they recognised the ultraconservative Ahmadinejad as a ringleader. But two Iranians who were leading figures in the storming of the embassy said he did not take part.

"We continue to look into it to establish the facts," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

Asked if the United States was aware of the allegations before the hostages went public, McClellan noted that President George W. Bush had said on Thursday "that he didn't have any information."

Involvement by the new Iranian leader in the 1979-1981 hostage crisis would send a chill through the U.S. government, which has not resumed diplomatic relations with Iran. Fifty-two Americans were held for 444 days.

Ahmadinejad was a founding member of the Office to Foster Unity that planned the seizure.

In Tehran, two members of that group who declined to be named told Reuters that Ahmadinejad did not participate in the siege.

"He believed that we would have to do the same with the Russian Embassy if we stormed the American one, and was against both," said one of the two student leaders. "But he supported the move after it was carried out."

Two other leading members who engineered the siege, Abbad Abdi and Mohsen Mirdamadi, have also denied the reports.

A CIA spokesman said the spy agency was one of several government agencies looking into Ahmadinejad's role in the 1979 revolution. He declined further comment.

The White House spokesman said he could not speak for what information the entire U.S. government might have.

"We're going back and looking at whatever information we have and trying to establish all the facts," McClellan said.

A U.S. official, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorised to speak publicly, said the U.S. government does have lists identifying Iranians who took part in the hostage crisis but "in some cases, names may not have been known."

The 48-year-old hard-line Tehran mayor was elected president in a landslide a week ago and takes over from reformist President Mohammed Khatami in August. At the time of the hostage-taking Ahmadinejad was a 23-year-old student at the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran.

Also on Friday, another former hostage, Barry Rosen, told Reuters he never had any contact with Ahmadinejad but believed that if another hostage, former Col. David Roeder, thought it was him, "then I believe him 100 percent."

Rosen was a U.S. Embassy press attache in Tehran when student militants stormed the compound. In 1998, Rosen met with one of his captors, Abbas Abdi, in a gesture of reconciliation.

"I can only say from my own point of view, I never did see him so I don't know that is the individual standing next to one of my colleagues," Rosen said.

"I feel that if Dave says it's so then it's so," he added.

Can someone explain to me why this matters?

Posted on Sat, Jul. 02, 2005

Ex-Iranian agent: Photo not Ahmadinejad

ALI AKBAR DAREINI

Associated Press


TEHRAN, Iran - A top Iranian former secret agent said Saturday that the hostage-taker in a 1979 photograph that has come under intense scrutiny is not President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but a former militant who committed suicide in jail.

Saeed Hajjarian, a top adviser to outgoing President Mohammad Khatami, identified the man in the photo dating to the 1979 U.S. Embassy siege as Taqi Mohammadi.

Iran's newly elected president has been accused of being a main participant in the taking of American hostages at the embassy. Six former U.S. hostages who saw the president-elect in photos or on television said they believe Ahmadinejad was among the hostage-takers. One said he was interrogated by Ahmadinejad.

The White House said it was taking their statements seriously. President Bush said "many questions" were raised by the allegations.

International media have compared photos of Ahmadinejad, who won a presidential runoff election last week, with a black-and-white picture of one of the hostage-takers, a young man with a thin, bearded face and dark hair that sweeps down across his forehead.

But Hajjarian told The Associated Press they were not the same person.

"This man is Taqi Mohammadi, a militant who later turned into a dissident and committed suicide in jail," he said, pointing to the 1979 photo.

He said Mohammadi was a militant who joined students in the embassy takeover. Mohammadi was later arrested on charges of involvement in the 1981 bombing in Tehran that killed the country's president and prime minister, and committed suicide in prison, Hajjarian said.

Hajjarian's comment follows statements by a number of the former Iranian students who carried out the U.S. Embassy seizure and held Americans hostage for 444 days that Ahmadinejad had no role in events.

Hajjarian, considered the brains behind Khatami's democratic reforms program, is a former top official in the Intelligence Ministry, or the secret service. Both supporters and opponents describe him as the "walking memory" of Iran's recent history because of his access to classified information and secrets within Iran's ruling Islamic establishment.

Hajjarian is one of many reformers who is at loggerheads with the hard-line Ahmadinejad.

He was shot by a hard-line vigilante in 2000 and is paralyzed and cannot speak fluently.

Posted on Sat, Jul. 02, 2005


Ahmadinejad not captor in 1979 photo, U.S. says

By Greg Miller

LOS ANGELES TIMES


WASHINGTON - U.S. investigators have concluded that newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not the glowering Islamic militant seen escorting an American hostage in a 1979 photo that was widely publicized this week, U.S. officials said Friday.

The conclusion casts doubt on what had been considered a key piece of evidence that Iran's new president was among the leaders of the group of Islamic fundamentalists who seized control of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, the capital, and went on to hold 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

A U.S. official familiar with the investigation of Ahmadinejad's role said that analysts had found "serious discrepancies" between the figure depicted in the 1979 photo and other images of the Iranian president.

The discrepancies included differences in facial structure and features, the official said.

"If there is a case to be made (that Ahmadinejad was among the hostage-takers in 1979)," the official said, "it doesn't look as if it will be done on the basis of those photographs."

The official stressed that the investigation is continuing and that, "It is still an open question (whether Ahmadinejad was involved in the hostage crisis.)"

Analysis of the photos was just one of many avenues in what has become a multiagency inquiry, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday that the people involved in the inquiry are "searching through all the information at their disposal," and plan to interview former hostages.

McCormack also said that "the intelligence community" is involved in the inquiry.

He did not elaborate, but other officials said that the CIA is among the agencies playing a leading role.

The Bush administration launched the investigation this week after several Americans who were among those taken hostage in Tehran in 1979 said they recognized the new Iranian president as one of their captors.

Those claims appeared to be bolstered by the 1979 photo, which was in the Associated Press archives. It depicts two militants, including one who bears a striking resemblance to Ahmadinejad, on either side of a blindfolded American.

The picture has been widely circulated on the Internet, and was carried in newspapers across the country.

William Daugherty, a former CIA officer who was among the 52 hostages, said Friday that he is not positive that Ahmadinejad is the bearded man depicted in the 1979 photo, but said that he remains convinced that Ahmadinejad was among the hostage takers.

Daugherty, who lives in Savannah, Ga., said he and other former hostages "did not make our identification based on that AP photo from 1979. We made it looking at the guy today."

The allegations surrounding Ahmadinejad have deepened long-standing tensions between the United States and the Islamic Republic, which have not had diplomatic relations in more than a quarter-century.

President Bush has declared Iran part of an "axis of evil," and administration officials have refused to rule out military intervention to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Officials close to Ahmadinejad, as well as some Iranians who are known to have helped orchestrate the seizure of the American Embassy in 1979, have said in recent days that Ahmadinejad was not involved.

But the Bush administration takes the charges seriously, challenging the new Iranian president to clarify his role in the hostage crisis, and vowing to conduct a thorough investigation.