Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have been one of the terrorists who took over the U.S. embassy in Iran in 1979, according to several former hostages.
Former hostages allege Iran’s new president was captor (CNN)
The White House said Thursday it is taking seriously the allegations by former hostages that Iran’s hardline president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of their captors at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran a quarter century ago. President Bush told foreign reporters he has “no information, but obviously his involvement raises many questions.”
“As soon as I saw the face, it rang a lot of bells to me,” Don Sharer, who served as the embassy’s naval attache at the time, told CNN. “…Take 20 years off of him. He was there. He was there in the background, more like an adviser.”
Abbas Abdi, the man well-known to be the leader of the 1979 hostage-takers, told CNN that Ahmadinejad, the Tehran mayor, “absolutely was not” part of the event that involved the captivity of 52 people.
Given the sore spot that the 444 day hostage crisis is in US-Iranian relations, this had better be a case of mistaken identity.
Update: Kate McMillan had this one in the wee hours of the morning.
