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Harry Tuttle
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of the Hoople Heads
Mar 2003
time: 00:20
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quote:
Ex-Hostages Say Iran Leader Was a Captor
By RUSS BYNUM, Associated Press Writer
40 minutes ago
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 told The Associated Press 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.
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 the U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi for trial. The shah fled Iran earlier that year after he was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution.
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."
Another former hostage, Paul Lewis, said he thought Ahmadinejad looked vaguely familiar when he saw a picture of him on the news last week, but the former Marine embassy guard said he could not be certain.
"My memories were more of the gun barrel, not the people behind it," Lewis said.
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.
A memory expert cautioned that people who discuss their recollections can influence one another in reinforcing false memories. Also, it's harder to identify from memory someone of a different race or ethnicity, said psychologist Elizabeth Loftus of the University of California, Irvine.
"Twenty-five years is an awfully long time," Loftus said. "Of course we can't say this is false, but these things can lead people down the path of having a false memory."
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."
___
Associated Press writers Aaron Beard in Raleigh, N.C., Amanda Keim in Phoenix, Deanna Wrenn in Indianapolis, Robert Imrie in Wausau, Wis., and Anna Johnson in Chicago contributed to this report.
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:20
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quote:
Originally posted by Ted Striker
Bush is probably upset not because of the pain Iraq is causing everybody, but because it limits his options in dealing with Iran.
The are pretty monumentally stupid though, and that part scares me.  |
a conventional invasion of Iran would be a mistake even if we had not a single soldier in Iraq. Look at the size of the place, the total population, the difficulties to geographic access to main population centers. Our advantage, if neocons like Ledeen and Amir Taheri are to be believed (folks I know can vouch for that, as far Teheran is concerned, at least), is a population that is hostile to the mullahs - an advantage likely to be lost in any US invasion. It would be necessary to leverage that advantage in some other fashion.
A hard line Iran govt is likely to push the EU 3 in the direction of the US, a good thing in and of itself. As Ge says, the proposed direction is sanctions. Ge has stated he thinks that would be unimportant. Reports on this recent election suggest great concern about the economy.
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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:20
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Hey, as long as Jimmy Carter isn't in charge of Iran I'm ok with it.
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DanS
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Kickball Capital of the World
Jan 1970
time: 00:20
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Man, this one's mushrooming on the internet...
quote:
Ex-Hostages Finger Iran's President-Elect
United States Wants Explanation of Ahmadinejad's Activities in 1979
By William Branigin and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 30, 2005; 4:24 PM
The United States today challenged Iran to answer questions about the reported involvement of the nation's new president in the 1979 seizure of American hostages in Tehran after several former captives identified him as a ringleader.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hard-line mayor of Tehran who decisively won a presidential run-off election last week, was identified by at least half a dozen former hostages as one of the militants who took over the U.S. Embassy in November 1979 and held 52 Americans captive for 444 days. Several former hostages said Ahmadinejad was present during harsh interrogations.
However, former leaders of the takeover said in Iran today that Ahmadinejad was not part of their leadership group, and a spokesman for the president-elect denied that he played any role in the hostage-taking at all.
The controversy revived bitter memories of the embassy seizure and brought to the forefront a dispute that has remained unresolved for 26 years. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were broken over the hostage crisis and have never been restored.
President Bush, speaking to reporters about the upcoming G8 summit meeting in Scotland, said he has "no information" on Ahmadinejad's alleged role in the embassy takeover. "But obviously his involvement raises many questions," Bush said, adding that he was confident the answers would be found.
A State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said the government will "look into this question seriously" to establish the facts. "We have not forgotten" that U.S. diplomats were taken hostage and held for more than a year, he said. "The Iranian government, with respect to this question, has an obligation to speak definitively concerning these questions that have been raised in public by these stories."
The issue is "not a matter just for the United States," McCormack said. "What is at stake here are questions about the ability of diplomats around the world . . . to freely do their work while posted abroad."
For the Bush administration, Iran has presented one of the most challenging aspects of foreign policy. During his first term, divisions within the administration left the White House paralyzed over whether to contain Iran or more actively promote so-called "regime change." The language today reflected a tougher line the administration now intends to take toward the Iranian government, U.S. officials said.
Among the former hostages convinced of Ahmadinejad's role in their ordeal is retired Col. David M. Roeder, 66, who served as deputy Air Force attache at the embassy in Tehran. In a telephone interview from North Carolina, he said Ahmadinejad was present at about a third of his roughly 45 interrogation sessions following the embassy takeover.
Roeder, who was among the most harshly interrogated of the hostages, said Ahmadinejad "seemed to be the next level above the interrogators and the interpreters and the guards." Roeder said the reason he remembers him so vividly is that he was present the first time that interrogators made a specific threat to kidnap his handicapped son in the United States and mutilate him "if I didn't start to cooperate." Roeder said his captors knew his son's school bus number and the time he left home to go to special education classes, apparently as a result of surveillance in the United States.
"That was scary," he said.
Kevin Hermening, a Marine Guard at the embassy and the youngest of the hostages, said of the Iranian president-elect, "It sure seems to me that he was the person doing the interrogations that first day of the captivity. When I looked at his photograph during the election run-off, it looked like him."
Hermening, who ran for Congress twice as a Republican, added: "When I saw his photographs he looked like one of the guards. I do not remember him brandishing any weapons. But I do believe he was one of those leading the interrogations."
Other former hostages said in television interviews today that they also remembered Ahmadinejad as one of their captors after seeing video footage and photos of him from news coverage of the Iranian election.
After several former hostages came forward, federal agencies today began investigating, examining pictures of the hostage-takers and calling in former captives for interviews.
However, Ahmadinejad's office in Tehran vehemently denied the former hostages' assertions. Separate denials also came from two of the embassy takeover's top student organizers, both of whom are considered reformers opposed to Ahmadinejad's election.
"Even if 52 hostages say he was interrogating them, they're either lying or making it up," said Abbas Abdi, one of the former organizers, in a telephone interview from Tehran. "He didn't do it. He wasn't among them at all, for sure."
Iran's president-elect might have come through the U.S. Embassy compound as "many other students came in," Abdi said, speaking through an interpreter. "But he wasn't among the embassy students at all. He was definitely not a member of the students" who organized the seizure.
Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, who for years has acknowledged being the senior mastermind of the takeover, also said Ahmadinejad was not among the leaders.
"The leaders are all well known," he said. "Everybody knows them, and he was not among them."
Iranian officials noted that the three top leaders each represented a major university that belonged to the Office for Fostering Student Unity. Ahmadinejad attended the Science and Industry University, which was not among those universities and is located in a far eastern part of the sprawling Iranian capital.
Since the stunning election upset last week in which Ahmadinejad scored a landslide victory, the Bush administration has ratcheted up its criticism of the theocracy. The State Department Wednesday called for the "immediate and unconditional" release of Akbar Ganji, an Iranian journalist who has challenged Iran's leaders and advocated reform.
"Ganji's courageous efforts to investigate extra-judicial killings by Iranian security forces and his commitment to free speech and democratic government have earned him the respect of many around the world," a statement said.
The administration expressed concern about Ganji's lack of legal representation and his health, saying that "his mistreatment in prison is a serious violation of fundamental human rights."
This week the administration reissued a $5 million reward for three Lebanese who have been indicted for the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847 to Beirut. U.S. Navy diver Robert Dean Stethem was tortured and murdered during the ordeal and his body dumped on the Beirut airport tarmac.
One of the alleged lead hijackers is Imad Mugniyah, a member of Lebanon's Iranian-backed Hezbollah organization who has traveled frequently to Iran, according to U.S. officials.
Although the allegations against Ahmadinejad have stirred bad blood over the hostage crisis, some analysts pointed out that many of the former Iranian militants who participated in it have become reformers.
Among them is Asgharzadeh, a former city council member who urged students to "invite all the hostages to return to Tehran" as guests, not hostages, of the Islamic Republic. "Today we invite all the hostages to return to Tehran," he said at the 1998 commemoration of the takeover. "Today we have a new language for the world. We defend human rights."
Mohsen Mirdamadi, another top ringleader, became the chairman of Parliament's foreign relations committee in the late 1990s, at the height of the reform movement. He urged rapprochement with the West, including the United States.
Washington Post staff writer Karl Vick in Istanbul and special correspondent Mehrdad Mirdamadi in Tehran contributed to this report. |
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Rufus T. Firefly
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is one way of saying it, though I prefer "mensch"
Sep 2000
time: 07:20
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quote:
Originally posted by DanS
This is more than a little glib description for what went down. |
No it's not. Did we prop up a brutal, unpopular, anti-democratic regime in Iran for decades? Yep. Did that regime regularly torture its own people? Yep. Did the place eventually explode because of it? Yep.
And when it did, what happened? A bunch of Americans -- and not just any Americans but credentialed representatives of the very government that had been propping up their country's murderous dictator -- got taken hostage. Not killed. Not tortured. Just held in captivity. Then released.
Iran has the place it does in our psyche because it was a dramatic moment of loss of innocence, unequaled until it was (far) surpassed by 9/11. It drove home that people around the world hate us, and possibly for good reason; and that we may be helpless to do anything about it. But as these things go, the occupation of the American embassy was practically civil. Ask the marines who lived through the Lebanon barracks bombing; ask Danny Pearl's widow. Compared to the real villainy of the world, both perpetrated against us and perpetrated by us, still being upset about the embassy seizure is like still holding a grudge against the kid who used to give you wedgies in 7th grade.
Last edited by Rufus T. Firefly on 01-07-2005 at 05:43
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30-06-2005 08:02
Almost seems like a 'they all look alike' phenomenon.
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