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Top Iranian official denies president was hostage-taker

A top Iranian former secret agent said the hostage-taker in a 1979 photograph that has come under intense scrutiny is not President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but a former militant who committed suicide in jail.

Saeed Hajjarian, a top adviser to outgoing President Mohammad Khatami, on Saturday also denied an Austrian newspaper report and claims by Iranian dissidents that Ahmadinejad had a role in the 1989 slaying of an Iranian opposition Kurdish leader and two associates in Vienna.

Ahmadinejad has been accused of taking US hostages when students seized the US Embassy in Tehran 26 years ago. Six former hostages who saw the president-elect in photos or on television said they believe Ahmadinejad was among the captors who held them for 444 days and one said he was interrogated by him. The White House said it was taking their statements seriously.

"I'm opposed to Ahmadinejad's policies and thinking, but he was not involved in the hostage drama nor in the assassination of an Iranian opposition Kurdish leader in Vienna," Hajjarian told reporters on Saturday.

Ahmadinejad denied on Friday that he was a hostage-taker. "It is not true," he said. "It is only rumors."

International media have compared photos of Ahmadinejad, who won a presidential runoff election last week, with a black-and-white picture of one of the hostage-takers, a young man with a thin, bearded face and dark hair that sweeps across his forehead.

But Hajjarian identified the man in the photo as Taqi Mohammadi.

"This man is Taqi Mohammadi, a militant who later turned into a dissident and committed suicide in jail," he said, pointing to the 1979 photo. Mohammadi was arrested on charges of involvement in the 1981 bombing in Tehran that killed the country's president and prime minister.

Former Iranian president Abholhassan Bani-Sadr, who lives in exile outside Paris, told reporters on Friday that Ahmadinejad "wasn't among the decision-makers but he was among those inside the embassy."

Bani-Sadr said Ahmadinejad was responsible for briefing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on the hostage situation.

"One of his roles ... was to inform Mr. Khomeini of what was happening at the embassy," Bani-Sadr said in a telephone interview.

Hajjarian denied those allegations as well.

Bani-Sadr said the new Iranian president was initially opposed to the hostage-taking but, according to his information, changed his mind once Khomeini gave his agreement.
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