Those behind hostage strike deny Ahmedinejad role

TEHRAN: Two leading figures in the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Iran denied on Thursday reports president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took part in the 444-day hostage drama, which led Washington to break ties with Tehran. “Ahmadinejad was not among those who occupied the American embassy after the revolution,” said Abbas Abdi, who helped to orchestrate the raid on the embassy and the seizure of its staff after the Islamic revolution. Fifty-two Americans were held for 444 days. Washington severed ties with Tehran in 1980 and has branded Iran as part of an “axis of evil” for allegedly pursuing nuclear arms and sponsoring terrorism. Iran denies the charges. In an interview with the Washington Times newspaper, three Americans held hostage in the Islamic state said they remembered Ahmadinejad, who won Iran’s presidential election by a landslide last week, as a key player in the seizure. “He was one of the top two or three leaders,” said retired Army Col. Charles Scott, 73, a former hostage. “The new president of Iran is a terrorist.” But Abdi, a former revolutionary student turned radical reformer who was jailed in 2002 for selling intelligence to foreigners including the US-based polling company Gallup, said the former American hostages had poor memories. The Times said Ahmadinejad was a 23-year-old university student at the time of the takeover in November 1979 and was a founding member of the radical student group that organised the storming of the US Embassy compound. Mohsen Mirdamadi, another ringleader of the hostage-taking drama in Tehran, rejected the Times report. “I deny such reports. Ahmadinejad was not a member of the radical students’ group who seized the embassy,” said Mirdamadi, a former lawmaker. Like many of the former hostage-takers, Mirdamadi is now an outspoken proponent of the need to reform Iran’s Islamic political system. The president-elect’s office has denied he helped storm the embassy. Opponents of Ahmadinejad, a former member of Iran’s hardline Revolutionary Guards, accused him in the election campaign of engaging in cross-border underground operations during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. His allies vehemently denied the charge. reuters

Home | Foreign