Posted on 07/02/2005 10:58:46 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -
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.
--
That hairline, to me is the best evidence of all.
See #16 that Grampa Dave posted.
But if this guy invaded the embassy and took hostages, then he committed an act of war against the US. That we should thoroughly investigate and if true, take action.
Pictures 2, 4, 6 & 8 are color blowups of the thug holding the arm of our American during the Carter embassy fiasco. That picture is shown below.
The nose doesn't match. Thin and pointy in the younger guy, fat, wide, and flatter in the older guy. I'd like it to be him, but the pics just don't seem to match.
You must be looking the thug on the far right.
Look at the jihadist thug with our man in his grip.
There was a lot of discussion on one of the threads....( not sure which one, we have so many now ), of how various facial features tend to change with age....nose is one of them...
This photograph of a blindfolded American hostage in 1979 and his Iranian captors has sparked a debate over the role of the President-elect in the crisis. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's opponents say that he is the man circled, but others in Iran have said that the photographed men are dead
=====
I don't know, but the hostages said the bearded circled one is the guy.
Pictures 2, 4 6 and 8 don't look like the man holding the arm. What am I missing? Look at the nose shadow in the color photos, then in the b&w picture, the angle is completely different, and the mustashe is more visible, more hair under his bottom lip. I'm having a hard time seeing the similarities.
There are two photos of our man being held.
The one that everyone has seen has a different thug holding his arm.
Check the photo in the series I posted. The bottom photo is relatively new to the discussions. From that photo, the pictures 2, 4, 6 and 8 were blown up and in color.
I'm out of here for lunch and an afternoon with some friends.
I still don't see what you're saying. In post #28, the man in the black and white photo (far right), holding the arm, isn't the man in the color photos. Perhaps you mean the black and white photo in post #27? Sorry for being dense....
I think I see, it's the man second from the right. Got it now. Sorry....
Well, that removes a severe impediment to international relations, leaving just the usual impediments of warring nations.
I was looking at the collection of photos, actually. It isn't just the nose, the chin doesn't appear to match either. One has a wider, more forward chin than the other. I'd like to think that we finally identified one of those scumbags, but I don't see a match.
This is all pretty pointless, because the official regime has done far worse to us since then, including the bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon and the kidnapping, torture and murder of the Lebanon CIA station chief. That regime has American blood all over its hands.
Take a good look at their chins. They don't match either.
And perhaps that is why so much confusion has been introduced into the many discussions of the photographs and just which photographs that the former hostages were responding to when they said "Thats him"......
Something deliberate going on perhaps.....
Possibly. I'm still confused as to which exact photos GD was refering to. The man in the color picture has a different background than any other pictures posted on this thread. Notice the person behind him in the color photo, yet in the black and white photos, no one is behind him.
I thought it was the nose. In the first hostage photo, the guy on the right has a nose that looks more like Ahmadinejad's. Especially note the high cheekbone lines that run from the center of the nose down around his mouth.
-PJ
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.