Photo shows Iran leader as '79 U.S. hostage taker

AP Reports: Former American Hostages Claim Iran's New Leader Held Them Captive

Published: June 29, 2005 8:25 PM ET updated Thursday 11:00 AM ET

SAVANNAH, Ga. The White House said Thursday it is taking seriously the allegations of some former American hostages who say the believe that Iran's president-elect was one of their captors in the late 1970s.

"I think the news reports and statements from several former American hostages raise many questions about his past," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said of the Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "We take them very seriously and we are looking into them to better understand the facts."

A quarter-century after they were taken captive in Iran, five former American hostages say they got an unexpected reminder of their 444-day ordeal in the bearded face of Iran's new president-elect.

Watching coverage of Iran's presidential election on television dredged up 25-year-old memories that prompted four of the former hostages to exchange e-mails. And those four realized they shared the same conclusion -- the firm belief that President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been one of their Iranian captors.

"This is the guy. There's no question about it," said former hostage Chuck Scott, a retired Army colonel who lives in Jonesboro, Ga. "You could make him a blond and shave his whiskers, put him in a zoot suit and I'd still spot him."

Scott and former hostages David Roeder, William J. Daugherty and Don A. Sharer said on Wednesday they have no doubt Ahmadinejad, 49, was one of the hostage-takers. A fifth ex-hostage, Kevin Hermening, said he reached the same conclusion after looking at photos.

Not everyone agrees. Former hostage and retired Air Force Col. Thomas E. Schaefer said he doesn't recognize Ahmadinejad, by face or name, as one of his captors.

Several former students among the hostage-takers also said Ahmadinejad did not participate. And a close aide to Ahmadinejad denied the president-elect took part in the seizure of the embassy or in holding Americans hostage.

The United States broke off ties with Iran after militant students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979, and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days to protest Washington's refusal to hand over Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi for trial.

The aide, Meisan Rowhani, told the AP from Tehran that Ahmadinejad was asked during recent private meetings if he had a role in the hostage taking. Rowhani said he replied, "No. I believed that if we do that the world will swallow us."

Scott and Roeder both said they were sure Ahmadinejad was present while they were interrogated.

"I can absolutely guarantee you he was not only one of the hostage-takers, he was present at my personal interrogation," Roeder said in an interview from his home in Pinehurst, N.C.

Daugherty, who worked for the CIA in Iran and now lives in Savannah, said a man he's convinced was Ahmadinejad was among a group of ringleaders escorting a Vatican representative during a visit in the early days of the hostage crisis.

"It's impossible to forget a guy like that," Daugherty said. "Clearly the way he acted, the fact he gave orders, that he was older, most certainly he was one of the ringleaders."

Ahmadinejad, the hard-line mayor of Tehran, was declared winner Wednesday of Iran's presidential runoff election, defeating one of Iran's best-known statesmen, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani. The stunning upset put conservatives firmly in control of all branches of power in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Scott, Roeder, Daugherty and Sharer said they have been exchanging e-mails since seeing Ahmadinejad emerge as a serious contender in Iran's elections.

"He was extremely cruel," said Sharer, of Bedford, Ind. "He's one of the hard-liners. So that tells you where their government's going to stand for the next four to five years."

After seeing recent newspaper photos, Sharer said, "I don't have any doubts" that Ahmadinejad was a hostage-taker.

Schaefer, of Peoria, Ariz., didn't recognize Ahmadinejad and said allegations that he had been a hostage-taker don't concern him as much as knowing hard-liners are back in power in Iran.

Scott gave a detailed account of the man he recalled as Ahmadinejad, saying he appeared to be a security chief among the hostage-takers.

"He kind of stayed in the background most of the time," Scott said. "But he was in on some of the interrogations. And he was in on my interrogation at the time they were working me over."

Scott also recalled an incident while he was held in the Evin prison in north Tehran in the summer of 1980.

One of the guards, whom Scott called Akbar, would sometimes let Scott and Sharer out to walk the narrow, 20-foot hallway outside their cells, he said. One day, Scott said, the man he believes was Ahmadinejad saw them walking and chastised the guard.

"He was the security chief, supposedly," Scott said. "When he found out Akbar had let us out of our cells at all, he chewed out Akbar. I speak Farsi. He said, `These guys are dogs they're pigs, they're animals. They don't deserve to be let out of their cells.'"

Scott recalled responding to the man's stare by openly cursing his captor in Farsi. "He looked a little flustered like he didn't know what to do. He just walked out."

Roeder said he's sure Ahmadinejad was present during one of his interrogations when the hostage-takers threatened to kidnap his son in the U.S. and "start sending pieces -- toes and fingers of my son -- to my wife."

"It was almost like he was checking on the interrogation techniques they were using in a sort of adviser capacity," Roeder said.

Hermening, of Mosinee, Wis., the youngest of the hostages, said that after he looked at photos and did research on the Internet, he came to the conclusion that Ahmadinejad was one of his questioners.

Hermening had been Marine guard at the embassy, and he recalled the man he believes was Ahmadinejad asking him for the combination to a safe.

"His English would have been fairly strong. I couldn't say that about all the guards," Hermening said. "I remember that he was certainly direct, threatening, very unfriendly."

Rowhani, the aide to Ahmadinejad, said Ahmadinejad said during the recent meeting that he stopped opposing the embassy seizure after the revolution's leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, expressed support for it. But the president-elect said he never took part.

"Definitely he was not among the students who took part in the seizure," said Abbas Abdi, the leader of the hostage-takers. Abdi has since become a leading supporter of reform and sharply opposed Ahmadinejad. "He was not part of us. He played no role in the seizure, let alone being responsible for security" for the students.

Another of the hostage-takers, Bijan Abidi, said Ahmadinejad "was not involved. There was no one by that name among the students who took part in the U.S. Embassy seizure."

Friday, July 01, 2005
http://www.iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2005&m=07&d=01&a=9
Iranian Paper 'Identifies' Students in Siege Photo

July 01, 2005
Times Online
Sam Knight and Michael Theodoulou

The Bush Administration said today that it is continuing to investigate allegations that the President-elect of Iran was involved in the 1979 attack on the US Embassy in Tehran, even as the photograph that triggered the controversy was further discredited.

The White House press secretary told reporters today that President Bush would not be surprised to learn that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elected as the new President of Iran last week, took part in the 444-day siege that ruined American relations with Iran.

"We continue to look into it and establish all the facts. I don’t think it should be a surprise to anyone if it turns out to be true," said Scott McClellan this morning, referring to allegations made by five American hostages on Wednesday that they remembered Mr Ahmadinejad as one of their captors.

"Given the nature of the regime and his own past, I don’t think it should be surprising," said Mr McClellan, who also repeated American criticisms of the recent Iranian elections, saying that "hand-picked candidates" had been allowed to run and that the elections were "well short of free and fair".

The continuing scrutiny of the White House stood in contrast to the increasing doubts surrounding the photograph that first prompted questions into Mr Ahmadinejad's role in the embassy siege.

On Tuesday, Iran Focus, a London-based Iranian news agency opposed to the President-elect, circulated a well known Associated Press photograph of the crisis, which began in November 1979, saying that it showed Mr Ahmadinejad holding the arm of an American hostage.

But today, an reformist newspaper in Tehran, Shargh, said that the Iranian students shown in the photograph were Ja’afar Zaker, a militant who went on to die in the Iran-Iraq war, and a student known only as Ranjbaran, who was later executed for alleged links to an extreme opposition group.

As for the American hostage shown in the photograph, The Times learnt yesterday that he is Jerry J. Miele, who was working at a communications officer at the Embassy in 1979. Reached at his home today in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, Mr Miele, 66, declined to comment on the photograph but said: "I don't have anything to say about the new President of Iran, I don't want to cause any trouble."

Even though Mr Ahmadinejad's role in the hostage crisis, let alone the photograph, has been widely disputed, not least by other hostage takers who led the capture of the embassy, more American hostages said on Friday that he could have been among their captors.

Barry Rosen, a former press officer at the embassy who now works at Columbia University told Reuters he had no direct memory of Mr Ahmadinejad but supported another former hostage, former Colonel David Roeder, who said yesterday that Mr Ahmadinejad had assisted interrogations of the hostages.

"I feel that if Dave says it’s so then it’s so," said Mr Rosen.

Yesterday, Mr Roeder and four other hostages said they were sure Mr Ahmadinejad had played a significant role in the embassy siege.

Iranian President linked to murders
Tony Allen-Mills, Washington
04jul05

INTELLIGENCE sources and Iranian opposition figures have accused Iran's new President of being involved in a string of assassinations in the Middle East and Europe in the 1980s and 90s.

The claims follow last week's allegations that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad participated in the student takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.
According to a report in The Sunday Times of London, Kazem Sami, who was the first Iranian health minister after the 1979 Islamic revolution but fell out with the ayatollahs, was the first of dozens of dissidents to die.

He was working in a Tehran clinic in November 1988 when an assailant posing as a patient stabbed him repeatedly.

The following July, three gunmen burst into a Vienna flat and opened fire on a meeting of Iranian Kurdish exiles.

Among three people killed was Abdul Rahman Qassemlou, the leader of Kurdish opposition to the ayatollahs in Tehran. The murders have never been solved.

An Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman said at the weekend that the Austrian Government had documents implicating Mr Ahmadinejad in the Qassemlou assassination.

"A dossier concerning Mr Ahmadinejad was submitted to the Federal Counter Terrorism Agency, which handed it over to the public prosecutor's office," Rudolf Gollia said. Vienna's public prosecutor's office was not available for comment.

Almost a decade after the Vienna murders, a clandestine group of Iranian militants began plotting the murder of British author Salman Rushdie, the victim of a fatwa sentencing him to death for supposed blasphemy in his book The Satanic Verses.

For years there had been only the vaguest allegations of a link between those events.

All that has changed with the election of Mr Ahmadinejad, the hardline former mayor of Tehran.

Mr Ahmadinejad's surprise victory in last month's poll has unleashed a flood of accusations, innuendo and investigations of his militant pedigree.

Iranian opposition websites are buzzing with reports of a leaked document that purportedly proves Mr Ahmadinejad, 49, led a team of would-be assassins that plotted to murder Rushdie. The document remained untraceable last week but a prominent opposition figure, Maryam Rajavi, of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, denounced Mr Ahmadinejad as a "terrorist, torturer and executioner".

Iranian officials dismissed many of the allegations as "absurd" and motivated by political malice.

But a senior Washington official said "a lot of filing cabinets are rattling" as intelligence and law enforcement agencies search for clues to the Iranian strongman's past.

There was also concern in Europe that whatever the truth, a process of US-led "demonisation" had begun that would damage European efforts to solve the crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Using details provided by US regional specialists, official Iranian websites and previously reliable opposition sources, it proved possible to piece together a sobering account of the new President's ties to ultra-conservative, anti-Western factions.

These include a unit long-suspected by US intelligence agencies of directing state-sponsored terrorist activities abroad.

With the return to Iran of Ayatollah Khomeini, the revolution's spiritual leader, Mr Ahmadinejad became his university's representative in the Student Office for Strengthening Unity, which played a central role in the seizure of the US embassy in 1979.

Several former embassy hostages claimed last week that Mr Ahmadinejad was among the students who held them captive for 444 days.

But experts using advanced facial recognition technology have established that he is not the man identified on last week's widely distributed photograph of hostages and captors. US officials, however, said they were continuing to investigate his possible role.

As Islamic rule intensified in the early 1980s with purges of moderate students, Mr Ahmadinejad joined the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps, the ultra-conservative military elite fiercely loyal to the ayatollahs.

A senior officer in the IRGC's special "internal security" brigade, Mr Ahmadinejad's duties included the suppression of dissident activity, which, according to his rivals, involved the interrogation, torture and execution of political prisoners.

US intelligence sources and Iranian opposition figures believe Mr Ahmadinejad became a key figure in the formation of the IRGC's Qods Force, which has been linked to assassinations in the Middle East and Europe, including the murder of Qassemlou.

The Sunday Times, AP, AFP
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15813147^2703,.html

Former Hostages ID Ahmadinejad
NewsMax.com Wires
Saturday, Sept. 17, 2005
by Kenneth R. Timmerman
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/9/17/103307.shtml

NEW YORK - A group of former hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran reaffirmed today there was "no doubt" that the lead interrogator during their ordeal was the current president of Iran.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has denied he personally took part in the hostage-taking, addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York today for five minutes, despite a finding by the U.S. Department of State that he was a "terrorist" and was ineligible for a visa..

Before he spoke, the former hostages and their supporters held a vigil in front of the Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran at 3rd avenue and 40th street.

"For twenty-six years, the government of Iran has not been held accountable for their violation of international law," said Kevin Hermening, who at 21 was a freshly-arrived Marine guard at the Embassy and the youngest hostage. "Despite our political differences as individuals, we all agree as a group that it is time to seek remedy. Ahmadinejad and his government need to be treated as a pariah."

Barry Rosen, now a professor at Columbia University, agreed. "We have lived with this for the rest of our lives," he said. "We were treated like animals."

He said the group of former hostages had resolved to talk anew about their ordeal in order to put a human face on victims of torture. "We are talking about the lives of millions of human beings who are living in pain on a daily basis."

Hermening identified Ahmadinejad as the lead interrogator for the military and security personnel at the embassy. "He was not an English speaker, but directed the interrogations. He told [the interpreters] what to ask. He ordered me to open safes," Hermening said.

He said he had spoken to other security officers at the embassy, including Tom Ahern and Colonel Charles Scott, and that all agreed there was "no doubt" the lead interrogator was Ahmadinejad.

Hermening recounted the story of Colonel David Roeder, who has spoken to reporters but was unable to travel to New York. "Colonel Roeder's interrogator was the current president of Iran. He told Rader, 'we know where you live. We know that you have a handicapped child. We know what time he gets picked up for school. We know where. If you don't answer our questions as we like, we are going to chop off his fingers and his toes and send them one by one to your wife in a box.'"

Iranian human rights activist Dr. Manoucher Ganji helped convince Hermening, Scott, and fellow hostage William Daughterty to speak to National Iranian TV (NITV), which broadcasts into Iran from Los Angeles. In separate interviews this summer, each described his encounter with the current Iranian president while being held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Personally Conducted

Roeder said that out of his 51 interrogations, Ahmadinejad personally had conducted one-third of them.

The former hostages said they had recognized Ahmadinejad even before photographs of the hostage-takers resurfaced in U.S. newspapers last June, at the time of the first-round of the Iranian presidential elections. "We knew the man from the movement of his eyes, his lips. We knew him," Hermening said.

Before the NITV interviews, the U.S. Department of State had not sought out the former hostages, although they knew that Ahmadinejad would be applying to travel to the United States to address the UN General Assembly this week.

"After their statements to an international television audience, the State Department couldn't do anything else but recognize him as a terrorist," Ganji said.

Ganji also presented to reporters the former head of a taxi company in Tehran, who said he was personally assaulted and tortured by Ahmadinejad in 1981.

Joseph Pirayoff's company was based in the Hotel Intercontinental in Tehran and provided long-term rentals to U.S. defense contractors, in addition to taxi services.

During the 1979 revolution, he received a phone call from a U.S. military attaché at the embassy, asking him to secretly transport family members of U.S. diplomats to evacuation flights at the Tehran airport at night.

Nearly two years later, Pirayoff said Ahmadinejad and 25 revolutionary guardsmen stormed his apartment looking for president Abolhassan Banisadr, who was ousted by Ayatollah Khomeini in a coup in June 1981. "I told them I didn't know Banisadr," he said. Ahmadinejad hit him so hard in the face he broke his jaw.

Ganji himself was “on an Iranian government hit list for eighteen years” while organizing opposition to the regime from Paris, he said.

Some of the former hostages were so upset that the State Department had failed to contact them to confirm the reports about Ahmadinejad that they wrote to Congress last week.

In a letter addressed to the chairman and ranking member of the House International Relations Committee, Rosen, Doughterty, Roeder, and Paul Lewis recounted the latest chapter of their saga.

"To our consternation, the administration waited six weeks [after the election of Ahmadinejad] before contacting ajy former hostages and then only to arrange future appointment times for interviews. The State Department began conducting the very first debriefings on Wednesday, 10 August. Then - incredibly - the very next day, with the debriefing process scarcely begun. the government leaked to the media a CIA report that the investigation had already been concluded that our stated concerns were a case of mistaken identity."

Initial media reports with the leaked CIA report appeared on Friday, August 12, just two days after the first debriefings of former hostages were held. The former hostages have worked with Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R, Fla), who has introduced legislation that would provide payment to the former hostages and their families.

The new bill, HR 3358, would abrogate the Jan. 19, 1981 Algiers Accords that prohibited U.S. persons from suing the government of Iran. The Algiers accords required the United States to release frozen Iranian government assets in exchange for the hostages, and sheltered the Iranian government from lawsuit.

More than twenty-four years after their release, the ordeal the hostages underwent remains with them.

Barry Rosen still recalls with shame signing a "confession" after his captors threatened to kill him. "I was thinking of my two young children," he recalled.

Kevin Hermening recalls the day his captors threatened to execute him, holding him blindfolded and handcuffed while they shouted execution commands and poked him repeatedly in the back with automatic rifles. "It was the most frightening experience of my life," he said.

Kenneth R. Timmerman
President, Middle East Data Project, Inc.
Author: Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran

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