Former hostages allege Iran's new president was captor

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http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/...ent/index.html

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A quarter-century after their 444-day ordeal at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, several former hostages say Iran's hardline president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of their captors.

"As soon as I saw the face, it rang a lot of bells to me," Don Sharer, of Bedford, Indiana, told CNN. He had served as the embassy's naval attache when the hostage-taking occurred.

"...Take 20 years off of him. He was there. He was there in the background, more like an adviser."

The November 4, 1979, embassy takeover followed protests demanding that the United States return the shah to Tehran for trial. He had been overthrown by the Islamic revolution 11 months prior and was receiving cancer treatment in New York at the time.

The embassy seizure resulted in a botched rescue mission that left eight U.S. soldiers dead and the severance of U.S.-Iranian ties ever since.

The Associated Press reports the White House is taking the allegations seriously.

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

"I saw his picture in the Washington Post on Saturday morning, recognized it immediately and then sent an e-mail out to some of my former colleagues ... telling them what I thought and seeing what kind of responses they might have to it," said William Daugherty, a former CIA officer who now lives in Savannah, Georgia.

Iranian officials deny Ahmadinejad took part, and members of the student group involved in the takeover -- some of whom now support reformist President Mohammed Khatami -- told CNN that Ahmadinejad was not part of it.

The AP, in its archives, has a series of photographs showing a student hostage-taker that some of the former hostages believe to be Ahmadinejad.

But Iranian officials deny it, and, while there is a resemblance, that resemblance is not definitive.

Ahmadinejad's official biography says that as a student at the University of Science and Technology, he was a member of the Office for Strengthening Unity, the student organization that planned the takeover.

Ahmadinejad joined the Revolutionary Guards in 1980 and served in the Iran-Iraq war.

Daugherty said he remembers "seeing him acting in a supervisory or leadership capacity during the first ... 2 1/2 weeks (but) on the 19th day, I was moved into solitary confinement and had limited contact with even my Iranian guards after that."

Sharer said he was 99 percent sure Ahmadinejad was involved.

"In one incident he just called (Army attache Col. Charles Scott) pigs and dogs and we deserved to be locked up forever," he said. "When you're placed in a life-threatening situation of that nature, you just remember those things."

The AP reports that one person who did not recognize Ahmadinejad as a captor was senior defense attache at the time, Col. Tom Schaefer. The AP reported him being more concerned about the return to power of hardliners in Iran than by the thought Ahmadinejad might have been a hostage-taker.

Asked about Schaefer's recollections, Daugherty and Sharer said memory works different ways for different people.

"We were all in different circumstances," Daugherty said. "We were exposed to some of the Iranians more than others. So, you know, if Tom was actually quoted correctly in saying he didn't remember, again that's not the same thing as the guy not being there."

The hostage crisis ended after intense negotiations. Minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as U.S. president on January 20, 1981, the 52 hostages were released.