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Friday, July 01, 2005

Iranian Paper 'Identifies' Students in Siege Photo

July 01, 2005
Times Online
Sam Knight and Michael Theodoulou

The Bush Administration said today that it is continuing to investigate allegations that the President-elect of Iran was involved in the 1979 attack on the US Embassy in Tehran, even as the photograph that triggered the controversy was further discredited.

The White House press secretary told reporters today that President Bush would not be surprised to learn that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, elected as the new President of Iran last week, took part in the 444-day siege that ruined American relations with Iran.

"We continue to look into it and establish all the facts. I don’t think it should be a surprise to anyone if it turns out to be true," said Scott McClellan this morning, referring to allegations made by five American hostages on Wednesday that they remembered Mr Ahmadinejad as one of their captors.

"Given the nature of the regime and his own past, I don’t think it should be surprising," said Mr McClellan, who also repeated American criticisms of the recent Iranian elections, saying that "hand-picked candidates" had been allowed to run and that the elections were "well short of free and fair".

The continuing scrutiny of the White House stood in contrast to the increasing doubts surrounding the photograph that first prompted questions into Mr Ahmadinejad's role in the embassy siege.

On Tuesday, Iran Focus, a London-based Iranian news agency opposed to the President-elect, circulated a well known Associated Press photograph of the crisis, which began in November 1979, saying that it showed Mr Ahmadinejad holding the arm of an American hostage.

But today, an reformist newspaper in Tehran, Shargh, said that the Iranian students shown in the photograph were Ja’afar Zaker, a militant who went on to die in the Iran-Iraq war, and a student known only as Ranjbaran, who was later executed for alleged links to an extreme opposition group.

As for the American hostage shown in the photograph, The Times learnt yesterday that he is Jerry J. Miele, who was working at a communications officer at the Embassy in 1979. Reached at his home today in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, Mr Miele, 66, declined to comment on the photograph but said: "I don't have anything to say about the new President of Iran, I don't want to cause any trouble."

Even though Mr Ahmadinejad's role in the hostage crisis, let alone the photograph, has been widely disputed, not least by other hostage takers who led the capture of the embassy, more American hostages said on Friday that he could have been among their captors.

Barry Rosen, a former press officer at the embassy who now works at Columbia University told Reuters he had no direct memory of Mr Ahmadinejad but supported another former hostage, former Colonel David Roeder, who said yesterday that Mr Ahmadinejad had assisted interrogations of the hostages.

"I feel that if Dave says it’s so then it’s so," said Mr Rosen.

Yesterday, Mr Roeder and four other hostages said they were sure Mr Ahmadinejad had played a significant role in the embassy siege.

http://www.iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2005&m=07&d=01&a=9

Looks like I had the wrong hostage, too, that isn't Barry Rosen, either!