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06-30-2005, 08:46 AM
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/viewstory.asp?Page=%5CForeignBureaus%5Carchive%5C2 00506%5CFOR20050630a.html
Iran's New Leader Allegedly Linked to US Embassy Hostage Drama
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
June 30, 2005
(Update: On Thursday morning, White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters that "news reports and statements from several former American hostages raise many questions" about Iranian President-Elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. McClellan said the White House takes those questions "very seriously and we are looking into them to better understand the facts.")
(CNSNews.com) - Iran's newly elected president was a leading member of a group of students who held 52 Americans hostage for more than 14 months at the outset of the Islamic Revolution, according to an Iranian opposition news agency.
The London-based Iran Focus says a wire service photograph now circulating on the Internet shows a young Mahmoud Ahmadinejad holding the arm of a blindfolded hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.
Separately, several of the former hostages have told the Associated Press that they recognize Ahmadinejad as one of their captors, and veteran BBC correspondent John Simpson confirmed that Ahmadinejad was one of the group of student radicals involved in the siege, whom he interviewed after the crisis ended.
Iran Focus says Ahmadinejad was a central council member of the main pro-Ayatollah Khomeini student body called the Office for Strengthening of Unity between Universities and Theological Seminaries (OSU).
"The OSU played a central role in the seizure of the United States Embassy," it said.
"Former OSU officials involved in the takeover of the U.S. Embassy said Ahmadinejad was in charge of security during the occupation, a key role that put him in direct contact with the nascent security organizations of the clerical regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, which he later joined."
Ahmadinejad, who confounded opinion polls by winning the presidential election last week after campaigning on a social justice and anti-corruption platform, would have been 23 at the time of the hostage crisis.
Nine months after the Feb. 1979 fall of a caretaker government appointed by the Shah, Islamic radicals seized the embassy on Nov. 4 and held 52 American diplomats, embassy staffers and others hostage for 444 days, eventually freeing them on the day of President Reagan's inauguration in Jan. 1981.
'New Islamic revolution'
In a fiery speech this week, Ahmadinejad spoke of a "new Islamic revolution" that had arisen this year and declared that "the wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world."
In Lebanon, the Iranian-sponsored Hizballah terrorist group hailed Ahmadinejad's election, saying it would "revive and rejuvenate" Khomeini's Islamic Revolution goals.
The largest exiled Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), claims that the president-elect's background is even more controversial than his alleged role in the hostage-taking.
During the 1980s, it says, Ahmadinejad and the OSU played a key role in purging dissident university lecturers and students on Khomeini's orders.
The NCRI also accuses him of working for a period as an "executioner" at Tehran's notorious Evin prison, where political prisoners are held.
He was later a senior officer in the Special Brigade of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and then a senior commander of the Corps' elite Quds Force.
The NCRI alleges that he was behind assassinations in Europe and the Middle East, including the 1989 killing of a Kurdish leader in Vienna, Austria.
Iran's New Leader Allegedly Linked to US Embassy Hostage Drama
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
June 30, 2005
(Update: On Thursday morning, White House press secretary Scott McClellan told reporters that "news reports and statements from several former American hostages raise many questions" about Iranian President-Elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. McClellan said the White House takes those questions "very seriously and we are looking into them to better understand the facts.")
(CNSNews.com) - Iran's newly elected president was a leading member of a group of students who held 52 Americans hostage for more than 14 months at the outset of the Islamic Revolution, according to an Iranian opposition news agency.
The London-based Iran Focus says a wire service photograph now circulating on the Internet shows a young Mahmoud Ahmadinejad holding the arm of a blindfolded hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.
Separately, several of the former hostages have told the Associated Press that they recognize Ahmadinejad as one of their captors, and veteran BBC correspondent John Simpson confirmed that Ahmadinejad was one of the group of student radicals involved in the siege, whom he interviewed after the crisis ended.
Iran Focus says Ahmadinejad was a central council member of the main pro-Ayatollah Khomeini student body called the Office for Strengthening of Unity between Universities and Theological Seminaries (OSU).
"The OSU played a central role in the seizure of the United States Embassy," it said.
"Former OSU officials involved in the takeover of the U.S. Embassy said Ahmadinejad was in charge of security during the occupation, a key role that put him in direct contact with the nascent security organizations of the clerical regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, which he later joined."
Ahmadinejad, who confounded opinion polls by winning the presidential election last week after campaigning on a social justice and anti-corruption platform, would have been 23 at the time of the hostage crisis.
Nine months after the Feb. 1979 fall of a caretaker government appointed by the Shah, Islamic radicals seized the embassy on Nov. 4 and held 52 American diplomats, embassy staffers and others hostage for 444 days, eventually freeing them on the day of President Reagan's inauguration in Jan. 1981.
'New Islamic revolution'
In a fiery speech this week, Ahmadinejad spoke of a "new Islamic revolution" that had arisen this year and declared that "the wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world."
In Lebanon, the Iranian-sponsored Hizballah terrorist group hailed Ahmadinejad's election, saying it would "revive and rejuvenate" Khomeini's Islamic Revolution goals.
The largest exiled Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), claims that the president-elect's background is even more controversial than his alleged role in the hostage-taking.
During the 1980s, it says, Ahmadinejad and the OSU played a key role in purging dissident university lecturers and students on Khomeini's orders.
The NCRI also accuses him of working for a period as an "executioner" at Tehran's notorious Evin prison, where political prisoners are held.
He was later a senior officer in the Special Brigade of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and then a senior commander of the Corps' elite Quds Force.
The NCRI alleges that he was behind assassinations in Europe and the Middle East, including the 1989 killing of a Kurdish leader in Vienna, Austria.