Biggy
06-30-2005, 06:32 PM
the infamous 1979 american embassy hostages - this guy was allegedly one of the terrorist captors. WOW.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/06/30/...dent/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/06/30/iran.president/index.html)
"NEW YORK (CNN) -- The White House said Thursday it is taking seriously the allegations by former hostages that Iran's hardline president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of their captors at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran a quarter century ago.
President Bush told foreign reporters he has "no information, but obviously his involvement raises many questions."
"As soon as I saw the face, it rang a lot of bells to me," Don Sharer, who served as the embassy's naval attache at the time, told CNN.
"...Take 20 years off of him. He was there. He was there in the background, more like an adviser."
Abbas Abdi, the man well-known to be the leader of the 1979 hostage-takers, told CNN that Ahmadinejad, the Tehran mayor, "absolutely was not" part of the event that involved the captivity of 52 people.
Abdi later became a supporter of reformist President Mohammed Khatami and was recently released from jail for advocating closer ties with the United States.
Iranian officials also deny Ahmadinejad was involved.
The November 4, 1979, embassy takeover followed protests demanding that the United States return the Shah of Iran to Tehran for trial. He had been overthrown by the Islamic revolution 11 months prior and was receiving cancer treatment in New York at the time.
The embassy seizure lasted 444 days and resulted in a botched rescue mission that left eight U.S. soldiers dead and the severance of U.S.-Iranian ties ever since.
The Associated Press, in its archives, has a series of photographs showing a student hostage-taker that some of the former hostages believe to be Ahmadinejad.
His official biography says that as a student at the University of Science and Technology, he was a member of the Office for Strengthening Unity, the student organization that planned the takeover.
Abdi told CNN that of the Office for Strengthening Unity members involved, none were University of Science and Technology students.
Ahmadinejad joined the Revolutionary Guards in 1980 and served in the Iran-Iraq war. Last Saturday he was declared the winner of Iran's presidential election, winning more than 61 percent of the vote over former two-term President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
"I saw his picture in the Washington Post on Saturday morning, recognized it immediately and then sent an e-mail out to some of my former colleagues ... telling them what I thought and seeing what kind of responses they might have to it," said William Daugherty, a former CIA officer who now lives in Savannah, Georgia.
Daugherty said he remembers "seeing him acting in a supervisory or leadership capacity during the first ... 2 1/2 weeks (but) on the 19th day, I was moved into solitary confinement and had limited contact with even my Iranian guards after that."
Sharer said he was 99 percent sure Ahmadinejad was involved.
"In one incident he just called (Army attache Col. Charles Scott) pigs and dogs and we deserved to be locked up forever," he said. "When you're placed in a life-threatening situation of that nature, you just remember those things."
The AP reports that one person who did not recognize Ahmadinejad as a captor was senior defense attache at the time, Col. Tom Schaefer. The AP reported him being more concerned about the return to power of hardliners in Iran than by the thought Ahmadinejad might have been a hostage-taker.
Asked about Schaefer's recollections, Daugherty and Sharer said memory works different ways for different people.
"We were all in different circumstances," Daugherty said. "We were exposed to some of the Iranians more than others. So, you know, if Tom was actually quoted correctly in saying he didn't remember, again that's not the same thing as the guy not being there."
The hostage crisis ended after intense negotiations. Minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as U.S. president on January 20, 1981, the 52 hostages were released."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/06/30/...dent/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/06/30/iran.president/index.html)
"NEW YORK (CNN) -- The White House said Thursday it is taking seriously the allegations by former hostages that Iran's hardline president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of their captors at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran a quarter century ago.
President Bush told foreign reporters he has "no information, but obviously his involvement raises many questions."
"As soon as I saw the face, it rang a lot of bells to me," Don Sharer, who served as the embassy's naval attache at the time, told CNN.
"...Take 20 years off of him. He was there. He was there in the background, more like an adviser."
Abbas Abdi, the man well-known to be the leader of the 1979 hostage-takers, told CNN that Ahmadinejad, the Tehran mayor, "absolutely was not" part of the event that involved the captivity of 52 people.
Abdi later became a supporter of reformist President Mohammed Khatami and was recently released from jail for advocating closer ties with the United States.
Iranian officials also deny Ahmadinejad was involved.
The November 4, 1979, embassy takeover followed protests demanding that the United States return the Shah of Iran to Tehran for trial. He had been overthrown by the Islamic revolution 11 months prior and was receiving cancer treatment in New York at the time.
The embassy seizure lasted 444 days and resulted in a botched rescue mission that left eight U.S. soldiers dead and the severance of U.S.-Iranian ties ever since.
The Associated Press, in its archives, has a series of photographs showing a student hostage-taker that some of the former hostages believe to be Ahmadinejad.
His official biography says that as a student at the University of Science and Technology, he was a member of the Office for Strengthening Unity, the student organization that planned the takeover.
Abdi told CNN that of the Office for Strengthening Unity members involved, none were University of Science and Technology students.
Ahmadinejad joined the Revolutionary Guards in 1980 and served in the Iran-Iraq war. Last Saturday he was declared the winner of Iran's presidential election, winning more than 61 percent of the vote over former two-term President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
"I saw his picture in the Washington Post on Saturday morning, recognized it immediately and then sent an e-mail out to some of my former colleagues ... telling them what I thought and seeing what kind of responses they might have to it," said William Daugherty, a former CIA officer who now lives in Savannah, Georgia.
Daugherty said he remembers "seeing him acting in a supervisory or leadership capacity during the first ... 2 1/2 weeks (but) on the 19th day, I was moved into solitary confinement and had limited contact with even my Iranian guards after that."
Sharer said he was 99 percent sure Ahmadinejad was involved.
"In one incident he just called (Army attache Col. Charles Scott) pigs and dogs and we deserved to be locked up forever," he said. "When you're placed in a life-threatening situation of that nature, you just remember those things."
The AP reports that one person who did not recognize Ahmadinejad as a captor was senior defense attache at the time, Col. Tom Schaefer. The AP reported him being more concerned about the return to power of hardliners in Iran than by the thought Ahmadinejad might have been a hostage-taker.
Asked about Schaefer's recollections, Daugherty and Sharer said memory works different ways for different people.
"We were all in different circumstances," Daugherty said. "We were exposed to some of the Iranians more than others. So, you know, if Tom was actually quoted correctly in saying he didn't remember, again that's not the same thing as the guy not being there."
The hostage crisis ended after intense negotiations. Minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as U.S. president on January 20, 1981, the 52 hostages were released."