TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- A top Iranian former secret
agent said Saturday 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, also denied an Austrian newspaper
report and claims by Iranian dissidents that
Ahmadinejad had a role in the 1989 slaying of an
Iranian opposition Kurdish leader and two associates
in Vienna. |
Iran's terrorist president Ahmadinejad
Photo: IranFocus |
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Ahmadinejad has been accused of taking American
hostages when students seized the U.S. Embassy in
Tehran 26 years ago. Six former hostages who saw the
president-elect in photos or on television said they
believe Ahmadinejad was among the captors who held
them for 444 days and one said he was interrogated
by him. The White House said it was taking their
statements seriously.
''I'm opposed to Ahmadinejad's policies and thinking
but he was not involved in the hostage drama nor in
the assassination of an Iranian opposition Kurdish
leader in Vienna,'' Hajjarian told The Associated
Press on Saturday.
Ahmadinejad denied on Friday that he was a
hostage-taker. ''It is not true,'' he said. ''It is
only rumors.''
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 across his forehead.
But Hajjarian identified the man in the photo as
Taqi Mohammadi.
''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.
Mohammadi was arrested on charges of involvement in
the 1981 bombing in Tehran that killed the country's
president and prime minister
Former Iranian president Abholhassan Bani-Sadr, who
lives in exile outside Paris, told The Associated
Press on Friday that Ahmadinejad ''wasn't among the
decision-makers but he was among those inside the
Embassy.''
Bani-Sadr said Ahmadinejad was responsible for
briefing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
on the hostage situation.
''One of his roles ... was to inform Mr. Khomeini of
what was happening at the Embassy,'' Bani-Sadr said
in a telephone interview.
Hajjarian denied those allegations as well.
Bani-Sadr said the new Iranian president was
initially opposed to the hostage-taking but,
according to his information, changed his mind once
Khomeini gave his agreement.
Hajjarian said Ahmadinejad believed the then-Soviet
Embassy, not the U.S. Embassy, should have been
taken.
''Ahmadinejad believed that the great Satan is the
Soviet Union and that America was the smaller
Satan,'' he said.
For Iranians, fervor over the 1979 Embassy takeover
-- a central event in their stormy Islamic
Revolution -- has faded. In fact, many former
hostage-takers have entered politics, and some of
the organizers of the siege are now leading
advocates of democratic reform and closer ties with
the United States.
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.
In Austria, an exiled Iranian dissident on Saturday
accused Ahmadinejad of playing a key role in the
1989 execution-style slayings of a Kurdish
opposition leader and two associates in Vienna.
The Austrian newspaper Der Standard quoted a top
official with Austria's Green Party Peter Pilz as
saying authorities have ''very convincing'' evidence
linking Ahmadinejad to the 1989 slaying of Kurdish
politician Abdul-Rahman Ghassemlou and two
associates by providing weapons to the Iranian
commandos who shot them.
Ghassemlou was secretary-general of the Democratic
Party of Iranian Kurdistan and was in Vienna for
secret talks with envoys from the Tehran regime.
Pilz could not be reached for comment Saturday, and
calls to Austria's Interior Ministry and the
nation's federal counterterrorism agency went
unanswered.
Exiled Iranian dissident Alireza Jafarzadeh, who
runs Strategic Policy Consulting, a Washington-based
think tank focusing on Iran and Iraq, said
Ahmadinejad was a Revolutionary Guard commander who
supplied the weapons used to kill the three on July
13, 1989 in Vienna. Jafarzadeh said his assessment
was based on Iranian government sources ''who have
provided accurate information in the past.''
Jafarzadeh is a former U.S. representative for the
National Council of Resistance of Iran. The council
is the political arm of the Mujahedeen Khalq, a
group that Washington and the European Union list as
a terrorist organization.
Neither Ahmadinejad nor his aides could be reached
Saturday for comment on the allegations surrounding
the Vienna killings.
AP
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