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cyrus
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 3:57 pm    Post subject: Hostage Roeder: "Ahmadinejad Threatened to Kidnap My So Reply with quote

Hostage Roeder: "Ahmadinejad Threatened to Kidnap My Son"

The newly selected president of Iran has been accused of being involved in the 1980 American hostage crisis. Former hostage David Roeder, 66, told SPIEGEL ONLINE, that Ahmadinejad threatened to kidnap his son and cut off his fingers and toes. "You don't forget someone like that," the former Assistant Air Force Attache says.

For Complete Interview Visit The Following URL: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,363072,00.html


Iran's president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stands accused of interrogating hostages during the 1980 American hostage crisis.
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 6:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

He sounds like the embodiment of the IRI and the ideal spokesman for that gang! Smile Captor, terrorist, assassin, executioner!
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The Sun Is Rising In The West!Soon It Will Shine on All of Iran!
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 8:44 pm    Post subject: Rodney 'Rocky' Sickman, who served as a Marine guard Reply with quote




AP - Thu Jun 30, 7:12 PM ET

Rodney 'Rocky' Sickman, who served as a Marine guard, and one of the Americans taken hostage in Iran a quarter century ago said, Thursday, June 30, 2005, in St. Louis, that he may have spotted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when Iranians first stormed the American Embassy on Nov. 4, 1979, and on two other occasions while being held captive. Sickman said, 'I am not 100 percent certain. He looks familiar.' Sickman, 47, said that the burden should be on the president elect to explain where he was the day the embassy was taken. (AP Photo/James A. Finley)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050630/480/st10106302313
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 9:33 pm    Post subject: French daily: Mulla's President was key US embassy hostage- Reply with quote

French daily: Iran’s Ahmadinejad was key US embassy hostage-taker

Wed. 29 Jun 2005

Iran Focus
Source: http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2687

Paris, Jun. 29 – A principal French daily reported that newly-elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in charge of security at the United States embassy in Tehran after he and fellow radical students loyal to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took over the compound by force in November 1979.

Libération wrote that Ahmadinejad was a member of Students Following the Line of the Imam [Khomeini] and a leader of the hostage-takers who held American diplomats and embassy staff for 444 days.

“In 1981 he joined the forces of [Assadollah] Lajevardi, the Revolutionary Prosecutor in Evin Prison who executed hundreds of [political] prisoners every night”, the daily added.

According to Libération, Ahmadinejad subsequently joined the Special Forces branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and later became a commander of the IRGC Qods (Jerusalem) Force and was responsible for the destruction of Iran’s opposition.

Former political prisoners who were in Evin Prison in 1981 have said Ahmadinejad was known to them as “Tir Khalas Zan”, literally meaning “he who fires coup de grace”.

The government-run website Baztab quoted allies of outgoing President Mohammad Khatami as confirming that Ahmadinejad fired coup de grace at prisoners who were executed in Evin Prison in the 1980s.

Iran’s clerical leaders have not shown any reaction so far to the growing controversy over the new president’s past involvement in terrorism and human rights violations.
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PostPosted: Thu Jun 30, 2005 10:54 pm    Post subject: Who Would Defend Iran's Eichmann? Reply with quote

French daily wrote:
French daily: Iran’s Ahmadinejad was key US embassy hostage-taker

Wed. 29 Jun 2005

Iran Focus
Source: http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2687

Paris, Jun. 29 – A principal French daily reported that newly-elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in charge of security at the United States embassy in Tehran after he and fellow radical students loyal to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took over the compound by force in November 1979.

Libération wrote that Ahmadinejad was a member of Students Following the Line of the Imam [Khomeini] and a leader of the hostage-takers who held American diplomats and embassy staff for 444 days.

“In 1981 he joined the forces of [Assadollah] Lajevardi, the Revolutionary Prosecutor in Evin Prison who executed hundreds of [political] prisoners every night”, the daily added.

According to Libération, Ahmadinejad subsequently joined the Special Forces branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and later became a commander of the IRGC Qods (Jerusalem) Force and was responsible for the destruction of Iran’s opposition.

Former political prisoners who were in Evin Prison in 1981 have said Ahmadinejad was known to them as “Tir Khalas Zan”, literally meaning “he who fires coup de grace”.

The government-run website Baztab quoted allies of outgoing President Mohammad Khatami as confirming that Ahmadinejad fired coup de grace at prisoners who were executed in Evin Prison in the 1980s.

Iran’s clerical leaders have not shown any reaction so far to the growing controversy over the new president’s past involvement in terrorism and human rights violations.




Ahmadinejad worked for Iran's Eichmann from 1981, How Many Political Prisoners Executed by Terrorist President-Select?

Who Would Defend Iran's Eichmann?
Source: http://www.iranncrfac.org/Pages/Publications/BOOKS/the%20myth%20of/Part%2021.pdf

It remains, after 16 years, the most harrowing experience of my life.
There was nothing unusual about that morning of June 26, 1982, as
I left my house at the usual time to go to the Tehran bureau of Agence
France Presse, where I worked. But unknown to me, I was under
surveillance by a special unit of the Revolutionary Guards. Half way
between home and Shohada (Jaleh) square, where the office was,
the Guards crashed their car into my Renault 4, pulled me out and
after beating me almost unconscious, blindfolded me and took me to
the notorious Evin Prison, where my sister, Guiti, had been executed
40 days earlier.
It was my second visit to Evin Prison. The first was in February,
when I was among a team of journalists who were taken on a
“sightseeing tour” of Evin Prison by the prison’s governor, Assadollah
Lajevardi. Despite all the efforts of Lajevardi and his henchmen to
make the prison look like a hotel and the prisoners a bunch of broken
“repentants,” the three French journalists who accompanied me were
not impressed. With their eyes, the prisoners were telling us that
this was all stage-managed for foreign journalists.
“There is something in the eyes of that man that sends shivers
down your spine,” one of the French journalists said of Lajevardi as
Behzad Naziri *
* Mr. Naziri is a member of NCR's Foreign Affairs Committee.
186
The Myth of Moderation
our car left the prison area. “I am not surprised they call him the
‘Butcher’.”
I could not imagine on that cold February day that in barely
four months’ time, I would be back to Evin, this time as a political
prisoner and not a visiting journalist. This time, there were no clean
cells, no smiling wardens, no lavish meals, no inmates strolling on
the lawn with their families. Blindfolded, I was taken straight to
the notorious torture rooms of Evin, where the agonizing cries of
prisoners being whipped, the acrid smell of burnt flesh, the hysterical
shrieking of children seeing their mothers under torture and a
hundred other sensations gave one a surreal sense of entering
another world. There it was that after a few hours, peeping under
the blindfold, I saw “the Butcher” again. This time his real self,
standing atop a woman prisoner, kicking her head and firing
questions at her while his torturers were doing all sorts of things to
her half-dead body...
My memories of Lajevardi in Evin Prison run long and deep, so
you can just imagine how I felt when on Sunday afternoon, August
23, 1998, I heard the news that the “Butcher of Evin” had been killed
in the Grand Bazaar of Tehran by Mojahedin resistance units. The
feeling of joy, relief, revenge, and much more that cannot be put in
words. But I was not alone in this. Millions of Iranians shared that
moment with me.
The news of the death of the most infamous henchman in the
clerical regime - also nicknamed the mullahs’ Eichmann - was greeted
with much joy and relief across the country and in Iranian
communities around the world. For almost two decades Lajevardi
symbolized the most gruesome crimes of the clerical regime against
humanity. He bore direct responsibility for the execution of tens of
thousands of political prisoners, the introduction and systematic use
in Iranian prisons of more than 170 forms of physical and
psychological torture, the systematic rape of women prisoners, even
teenage girls, as a means of shattering prisoners’ morale and
breaking their resistance, and the list goes on.
It was not surprising, therefore, to see all Iranians expressing
outrage and anger when the regime’s president, Mohammad
Khatami, issued a statement only hours after Lajevardi’s death,
heaping praise on the chief executioner and calling for the “swift
187
Who Would Defend Iran's Eichmann?
punishment” of those who killed him.
Until February 1998, Lajevardi was the Head of the State
Prisons Organization. After his resignation, he maintained a
considerable influence in the administration of prisons and torture
centers as one of the closest aides to the supreme leader, Ali
Khamenei, and mullahs’ President Mohammad Khatami. Lajevardi’s
opinion was always sought in any new campaign against the
Mojahedin and other dissidents.
Lajevardi began his political activities in the early 1960s when
he joined the Coalition of Islamic Associations, an extremist
fundamentalist group of Khomeini’s followers. He was arrested in
1969 for his part in the bombing of the Tehran offices of the Israeli
Airlines, El Al.
In the shah’s prison, Mojahedin political prisoners under the
leadership of Mr. Massoud Rajavi, boycotted Lajevardi because of
his extremely fundamentalist and backward views.
With the overthrow of the shah’s regime and the mullahs’ ascent
to power, Khomeini appointed Lajevardi as the Islamic Revolutionary
Prosecutor of Tehran. He was recommended for the job by the leading
figure in the ruling Islamic Republican Party, the then Chief Justice
Mohammad Hossein Beheshti.
Lajevardi was appointed to this senior position without any
academic or practical background in law. After his death, a clerical
official told the state television: “The Imam (Khomeini) appointed
Mr. Lajevardi to this job so that he would uproot and annihilate the
Mojahedin and the counter-revolutionaries in Iran.”
Lajevardi turned the Islamic Revolutionary Prosecutor’s Office
into one of the most dreaded apparatus of repression, unleashing a
campaign of ruthless persecution and inquisition against the
opposition, especially the Mojahedin. Even before the government
began its campaign of mass executions in June 1981, Lajevardi led
armed mobs in attacks on Mojahedin offices and centers. Under his
supervision, more than 3,000 Mojahedin activists were jailed and
tortured before June 1981.
But the horror of Lajevardi’s inhuman innovations reached its
zenith after June 1981, when Khomeini’s infamous fatwa against
the Mojahedin effectively became the law. In his decree, Khomeini
had made it a crime punishable by death to be a member or a
188
The Myth of Moderation
supporter of the Mojahedin
These are among the long list of crimes perpetrated by Lajevardi:
1. As the Revolutionary Prosecutor of Tehran and the governor
of Evin prison, and acting on Khomeini’s personal orders, Lajevardi
was directly responsible for the execution of tens of thousands of
political prisoners in the 1980s, mainly from the Mojahedin. On
February 8, 1982, Lajevardi commanded the attack on the
Mojahedin’s central base in Tehran. He appeared on the state
television that evening holding in his arms the infant son of
Resistance Leader Massoud Rajavi and his wife, Ashraf, over the
dead bodies of Ashraf and Moussa Khiabani, Mr. Rajavi’s deputy in
Iran.
2. In prison, Lajevardi raped or executed hundreds of women,
who included teenage girls and elderly mothers.
3. He personally tortured political prisoners and fired coup de
grace at executed prisoners.
4. Lajevardi personally tortured and executed Mrs. Sakineh
Mohammadi Ardehali (Mother Zakeri), 60, Mrs. Akram Islami, 70,
Mrs. Malek-Taj Hakamian, 50, Mrs. Arasteh Qolivand (Mother
Shayesteh), 57, Mrs. Rezvan Rafipour (Mother Rezvan), and Mrs.
Massoumeh Shadmani (Mother Kabiri), Mrs. Massoumeh Azodanlou
(younger sister of Iranian Resistance’s President-elect Maryam
Rajavi), Mrs. Zohreh Tabrizi, Mrs. Qodsi Mohammadi and Mrs.
Shahla Hariri-Motlaq.
5. He was among the main planners of Gohardasht Prison and
expanded solitary cells in order to intensify the torture of political
prisoners and break their resistance.
6. Lajevardi formed criminal gangs and death squads consisting
of Revolutionary Guards and criminal agents in order to assault and
assassinate Mojahedin activists and political prisoners after their
release from jail.
7. He made it a common practice in prisons to torture prisoners
in front of their parents, husbands or wives and children.
8. Lajevardi devised a plan to set up forced labor camps for
political prisoners on a nation-wide scale.
189
Who Would Defend Iran's Eichmann?
Lajevardi in his own words
• Lajevardi’s press conference as Director of State Prisons:
“If we were to conduct medical tests on all prisoners, we would
have to pay the Ministry of Health some 500 billion rials for 468,000
prisoners... To manage this number of inmates, we have converted
all facilities available ranging from libraries, mosques, cultural clubs
etc., into prisons.” 1
* Lajevardi’s address to Evin prisoners in 1981:
“The religious judge has issued a religious verdict ruling that
we should punish you so much so that you would either repent or
die.” 2
* “Until we eliminate the very last one of these (Mojahedin),
there will no compromise in the nature of the Revolutionary
Prosecutors. So long as they still have some energy, we will fight
them and will not rest until we wipe out all of them.” 3
* “There is no need for long trials for those whose crimes are
obvious or those who themselves have confessed that they used
weapons and killed people. Two hours after they are arrested, we
complete the trial, issue and carry out the verdict. We are hopeful to
uproot the (Mojahedin) very soon.” 4
* “There are no political prisoners in Iran. Our only problem
are the common criminals.” 5
* “The corrupt grouplets must be eliminated. Since they are
fighting the Islamic Republic, according to a religious decree,
everyone belonging to them must be executed because they wage
war on God. No member of the Mojahedin must feel safe in this
country. They must always be fearful and on the run...” 6
Worldwide notoriety
Over the past two decades, hundreds of reports and articles have
appeared in the international press on Lajevardi’s central role in
190
The Myth of Moderation
the clerical regime’s crimes against humanity. The Washington Post’s
article, titled “Iranian Prison Horror,”7 was typical among them:
The malevolent face of Assadollah Lajevardi, the new directorgeneral
of Iran’s prisons, says it all about human rights in Iran.
They don’t exist.
President Hashemi Rafsanjani has appointed this man, whose
reputation as the top torturer of Tehran is uncontested. Lajevardi
should have been tried or at least banished for his bloody excesses
during the reign of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Instead, he is overseeing
all prisons in Iran, proving that Khomeini’s death and Rafsanjani’s
ascension to power changed nothing...
Lajevardi is widely known in Iran as the ‘Butcher of Evin’- a
nickname earned when he presided over Iran’s most notorious prison,
Evin, in the foothills outside Tehran. It is one of 70 prisons in and
around Tehran alone and one of 600 throughout Iran.
A former lingerie peddler, Lajevardi took the Evin assignment
like a rattlesnake takes the exposed flesh. He packed 60 prisoners
to a cell at Evin, executed thousands and tortured thousands more
in ways that normal people could not conceive.
He and other officials, including a member of the Iranian
parliament, raped female prisoners, including virgins whom
Khomeini wanted sullied before they were sent to the next life.
The innovation that earned Lajevardi the “butcher” nickname
was his practice of draining the blood of Iranians on death row. The
blood was used as plasma for Iranian soldiers fighting the long war
with Iraq. Lajevardi was careful to leave his victims just enough
blood so they were conscious when they went before the firing squad...
“Butcher of Evin” killed in attack
CNN, Aug. 23: In Iran two gunmen killed Iran’s former general
prosecutor in Tehran’s grand bazaar. The Baghdad-based Iranian
opposition, the Mojahedin Khalq, claimed responsibility for the
Sunday killing of Assadollah Lajevardi, known to his enemies as the
butcher of Evin.
Lajevardi was the one-time head of the notorious Evin prison in
northern Tehran and was blamed for ordering the death of tens of
thousands of political prisoners ten years ago in the summer of 1988.
191
Who Would Defend Iran's Eichmann?
“Butcher of Evin” shot dead in Tehran
Tehran, Aug. 23 (AFP) - Assadollah Lajevardi, Iran’s former
prison chief known as “The Butcher,” was shot dead here Sunday in
an attack claimed by the country’s leading armed opposition group.
For his repressive methods, he was dubbed as “the Butcher of
Tehran”.
After the Islamists came to power, he served a stint as prosecutor
general, a position which he used to wage a repressive and bloody
campaign against “counter-revolutionaries.”
Later he was put in charge of Evin prison, where he was accused
of overseeing widespread acts of torture and other human rights
violations in the 1980s, when the regime waged a merciless campaign
against opposition groups.
Lajevardi was promoted in 1989 to the post of director of the
country’s prison system.


Last edited by cyrus on Fri Sep 21, 2007 10:32 pm; edited 2 times in total
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 8:50 am    Post subject: Iran's New Leader Suspected in '89 Attack Reply with quote

Iran's New Leader Suspected in '89 Attack

By WILLIAM J. KOLE,

Associated Press Writer
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050702/ap_on_re_eu/austria_iran_2

VIENNA, Austria - Austrian authorities have classified documents suggesting that Iran's president-elect may have played a key role in the 1989 execution-style slayings of an Iranian Kurdish leader and two associates in Vienna, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Austria's Interior Ministry and the public prosecutor's office are investigating alleged evidence pointing to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's possible involvement in the attack, the daily Der Standard reported.

Officials were not immediately available to comment on the report Saturday.

The allegations against Ahmadinejad come as some of the Americans who were taken captive in Iran in 1979 implicate the newly elected leader in the hostage crisis. Radical Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

In Austria, Green Party leader Peter Pilz told the newspaper he wants a warrant issued for the arrest of Ahmadinejad, who he alleged "stands under strong suspicion of having been involved."
Pilz accused the hard-liner of planning the murders of Kurdish resistance leader Abdul-Rahman Ghassemlou and two of his colleagues, all of whom were shot in the head at a Vienna apartment by Iranian commandos on July 13, 1989. A fourth victim survived the attack and was able to crawl out of the apartment and alert Austrian authorities.

Pilz told Der Standard his source was an unidentified Iranian journalist living in France, who he said also claimed to have evidence that former Iranian President Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani gave the order to have Ghassemlou killed. He did not elaborate.

He said Ahmadinejad, then a high-ranking member of Iran's elite revolutionary guard, allegedly traveled to the Austrian capital a few days before the slayings to deliver the murder weapons to the commandos who carried out the attack. Austrian authorities have said the gunmen apparently entered the alpine country with Iranian diplomatic passports.

Pilz said the journalist was contacted in 2001 by one of the alleged gunmen, described as a former revolutionary guard who has since died in a drowning accident.

"The descriptions of the informant contained details of the scene (of the slayings) which could only have come from someone who was there," Pilz said. He said the gunman's account, which included "very convincing" evidence implicating Ahmadinejad, was turned over at the time to Austria's federal counterterrorism agency.

Prague's Pravo newspaper reported similar allegations on Friday, quoting Hossein Jazdan Panah, an exiled Kurdish opposition member, as saying Ahmadinejad "was in charge of hit operations abroad" at the time of the Vienna killings.

Ghassemlou, the gunmen's principle target, was secretary-general of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan. His delegation had been in Vienna for secret talks with envoys from the Tehran regime.

The gunmen managed to slip out of Austria after the attack and were never arrested.

Pilz's Green Party pressed unsuccessfully in 1997 for the creation of a special parliamentary inquiry to look into a possible cover-up by Austrian officials, who it believes bowed to pressure from Iran's government and allowed the commandos to leave Austria, allegedly providing them a police escort to Vienna's international airport. Those allegations have never been proven.

On Friday, the United States said it would not be surprised if Ahmadinejad turns out to have been a main participant in the holding of American hostages in Tehran a quarter-century ago, although the Bush administration cautioned that it was still trying to determine the facts.

Five former U.S. hostages who saw Ahmadinejad in photographs or on television said they believe he was among the hostage-takers. One said he was interrogated by Ahmadinejad.

"I don't think it should be surprising to anyone if it turns out to be true," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said in Washington. "This is a regime run by an unelected few that only allowed its hand-picked candidates to run in an election that was well short of free and fair."


AP Photo: This is an undated picture of Iranian president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, released by Mardomyar, Ahmadinejad's campaign...
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PostPosted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 11:07 am    Post subject: US agents probe past of Iran's leader Reply with quote

The Sunday Times - World


US agents probe past of Iran's leader
Tony Allen-Mills, Washington
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1678496,00.html

THE murders started in the 1980s. Kazem Sami M.D., who was the first Iranian health minister after the 1979 Islamic revolution but fell out with the ayatollahs, was one of the first of dozens of dissidents to die. He was working in a Tehran clinic in November 1988 when an assailant posing as a patient stabbed him repeatedly.

The following July, three gunmen burst into a Vienna flat and opened fire on a meeting of Iranian Kurdish exiles. Among three people killed was Abdul Rahman Qassemlou, the leader of Kurdish opposition to the ayatollahs in Tehran. The murders have never been solved.


Almost a decade later, a clandestine group of Iranian militants began plotting the murder of Salman Rushdie, the victim of a fatwa sentencing him to death for supposed blasphemy in his book The Satanic Verses.

For years there had been only the vaguest allegations of a link between those events. All that has changed with the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hardline former mayor of Tehran, as Iran’s new president.

Ahmadinejad’s surprise victory in last month’s poll has unleashed a flood of accusation, innuendo and investigation of his militant pedigree. Accused by his enemies of orchestrating a string of murders in the 1980s and 1990s, Ahmadinejad, 49, is also being scrutinised by US intelligence agencies over claims that he participated in the student takeover of the US embassy in Tehran in 1979.

Opposition websites are buzzing with reports of a leaked document that purportedly proves Ahmadinejad led a team of would-be assassins that plotted to murder Rushdie.

The document remained untraceable last week but a prominent opposition figure, Maryam Rajavi, of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, denounced Ahmadinejad as a “terrorist, torturer and executioner”.

In a further twist, an Austrian newspaper claimed yesterday that the country’s authorities were studying classified documents suggesting he played a key role in the Vienna killings.

Iranian officials have dismissed many such allegations as “absurd” and motivated by political malice. Asked by The New York Times whether he was among the hostage takers in 1979, Ahmadinejad replied: “It is not true. It is only rumours.”

But a senior Washington official said “a lot of filing cabinets are rattling” as intelligence and law enforcement agencies search for clues to the Iranian strongman’s past.

There was also concern in Europe that whatever the truth, a process of American-led “demonisation” has begun that will damage European efforts to solve the crisis over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“If he has got that sort of [militant] form, it’s going to be easy for the Americans to demonise him and the prospects for doing business with him becomes that much more difficult,” said one European official.

Amid the political frenzy, it was not easy last week to separate fact from fantasy. Yet from details provided by US regional specialists, official Iranian websites and previously reliable opposition sources, it proved possible to piece together a sobering account of the new president’s ties to ultraconservative anti-western factions. These include a unit long suspected by US intelligence agencies of directing state-sponsored terrorist activities abroad.

Born in the desert town of Garmsar, east of Tehran, in 1956, Ahmadinejad was the son of a blacksmith. He attended Tehran’s Elm-o Sanaat University in the last years of the Shah’s rule and was swept up in the wave of resentment that spawned the 1979 revolution.

With the return to Iran of Ayatollah Khomeini, the revolution’s spiritual leader, Ahmadinejad became his university’s representative in the student Office for Strengthening Unity, which would play a central role in seizure of the US embassy.
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 04, 2005 2:53 pm    Post subject: Mullah president-select plotted dissident's murder Reply with quote

Mullah president-select plotted dissident's murder: Kurdish rebels

Mon Jul 4, 9:24 AM ET

Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050704/wl_mideast_afp/iranahmadinejadkurdsaustria_050704132410

KOI SANJAQ, Iraq (AFP) - Iranian president-elect Mahmood Ahmadinejad was directly involved in plotting the 1989 assassination of a Kurdish rebel leader in Vienna, according to an official of the banned Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran.

"According to our information, the Iranian government formed three committees for the assassination" of then KDPI leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, party offical Hassan Ashrafi told AFP at his base in neighbouring Iraq.

"The first one planned it, the second one which was led by Ahmadinejad was tasked with facilitating it and the third one executed it," he said Monday.

Ashrafi said aides of then president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had approached the KDPI seeking a secret meeting with Ghassemlou which they had then abused to murder him.

Among those present at the July 13 meeting on the Iranian side were three members of the secret service, he said, naming them as Haji Mustafawi, Jaafar Sahraroudi and Mansur Bzurkian.

He said it was Mustafawi who pulled the trigger killing Ghassemlou and Abdullah Qadiri, another KDPI official. When these allegations have surfaced in the past, the officials have not commented.

A third Kurd was also killed, according to Austrian authorities, who said said Saturday they had documents implicating the president-elect in the murders.

"A dossier concerning Mr. Ahmadinejad was submitted to the Federal Counter-Terrorism Agency, which handed it over to the public prosecutor's office," interior ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia said.

But the Iranian foreign ministry flatly denied Ahmadinejad's involvement in the killings and warned European countries not to be duped by "the Zionist propaganda" campaign to smear the president-elect's reputation.

"Our recommendation to the Europeans is this: don't be tricked and fall into the trap of Zionist propaganda," said ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi.

"They should separate their interests from those of the American and the Zionist regimes."

The KDPI is Iran's main Kurdish rebel faction. The Maoist Komaleh also operates in Kurdish-inhabited areas along the Turkish and Iraqi border, although both group's attacks on security forces have been much reduced in recent years.

Ahmadinejad, who won a shock landslide in a June 24 election run-off, has also been accused of involvement in the 1979 hostage-taking at the US embassy in Tehran, which led to the severing of ties between Iran and the United States the following year.
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 05, 2005 10:53 am    Post subject: Iran: Ahmadinejad’s past in Revolutionary Guards Reply with quote

Iran: Ahmadinejad’s past in Revolutionary Guards invites scrutiny
Tue. 5 Jul 2005



Iran Focus
Source URL: http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2733

London, Jul. 5 – Iran Focus has obtained the photograph of Iran’s President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with Ayatollah Khomeini’s Chief Representative in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in the 1980s. The photograph was taken from footage on Iran’s state-run news television channel, Shabakeh Khabar.

Ayatollah Fazlollah Mahallati was the Islamic Chief Commissar of the Revolutionary Guards. In that position, he oversaw the activities of the Revolutionary Guards and played a critical role in shaping the force that became the most dreaded security agency in clergy-ruled Iran, a powerful military force, and the long arm of Iran’s Islamic revolution that operated far beyond Iran’s borders.

As Khomeini’s top representative in the Revolutionary Guards, Mahallati was given the task of streamlining the work of a plethora of government agencies involved in sponsorship of terrorism in different countries. One of the biggest operations planned under the supervision of Mahallati and other top commanders of the Revolutionary Guards was the bombing of the U.S. marines’ compound in Beirut in October 1983, which killed 241 American servicemen. The operation was directed by the Revolutionary Guards Command Headquarters in Tehran.

Then-Minister of Revolutionary Guards Mohsen Rafiqdoost said in July 1987, “both the TNT and the ideology which in one blast sent to hell 400 officers, NCOs, and soldiers at the Marine headquarters were provided by Iran”. Rafiqdoost’s comments were published in the Tehran daily Ressalat on July 20, 1987.

The photograph obtained by Iran Focus shows Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the new Iranian President, standing behind Ayatollah Mahallati, when Ahmadinejad was an officer of the Revolutionary Guards involved in terrorist activities.

Prof. Magnus Ranstorp of the University of Saint Andrews, a world authority on terrorism, wrote in a 1994 study on the Lebanese Hizbollah, “The movement was secretly governed by a supreme religious body, which had been instituted by Iran’s Fazlollah Mahallati in 1983, fashioned after the upper echelons of Iran’s clerical leadership”.

In the early 1980s, Ahmadinejad worked in the “Internal Security” department of the Revolutionary Guards and earned notoriety as a ruthless interrogator and torturer. According to the state-run website Baztab, allies of outgoing President Mohammad Khatami have revealed that Ahmadinejad worked for some time as an executioner in the notorious Evin Prison, where thousands of political prisoners were executed in the bloody purges of the 1980s.

Ayatollah Mahallati, Ahmadinejad’s mentor in the Revolutionary Guards, died in a plane crash in 1987. But before his death, he promoted Ahmadinejad to the rank of a senior officer in the Special Brigade of the Revolutionary Guards in Ramazan Garrison near Kermanshah in western Iran.

Ramazan Garrison was the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards’ “extra-territorial operations”, a euphemism for terrorist attacks beyond Iran’s borders.

In Kermanshah, Ahmadinejad became involved in the clerical regime’s terrorist operations abroad and led many “extra-territorial operations of the IRGC”.

Ahmadinejad was involved in a series of assassinations in the Middle East and Europe, including the assassination of Iranian Kurdish leader Abdorrahman Qassemlou, who was shot dead by senior officers of the Revolutionary Guards in a Vienna flat in July 1989. He was also involved in the assassination of Shapur Bakhtiar in Paris in August 1991.

Ahmadinejad’s ties to two figures who have been publicly associated in these two attacks are known to many. Ahmadinejad worked closely with General Jaafar Sahraroudi when both were based in Ramazan Garrison. Sahraroudi was arrested by Austrian police in the same room where Kurdish leader Abdurrahman Ghassemlou and his two associates were gunned down in July 1989. Under pressure from Tehran, the Austrian authorities sent Sahraroudi and another arrested terrorist suspect to Tehran.

Ahmadinejad was also a close associate of Hossein Sheikh-Attar, who was indicted by the French prosecutors investigating the murder of Bakhtiar.


Last edited by cyrus on Mon May 08, 2006 11:27 am; edited 3 times in total
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 05, 2005 10:56 am    Post subject: Iran's Ahmadinejad linked to Vienna murder probe Reply with quote

Iran's Ahmadinejad linked to Vienna murder probe

05 Jul 2005 13:32:11 GMT

Source: Reuters
Source URL: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L05705088.htm

By Louis Charbonneau

VIENNA, July 5 (Reuters) - Austrian prosecutors have launched an investigation into whether Iran's president-elect was involved in the 1989 assassination of a Kurdish leader in Vienna, the Interior Ministry said on Tuesday.

A ministry spokesman confirmed that prosecutors had started a probe by asking the ministry's anti-terrorism task force to investigate the case, but declined to provide any details.

"The prosecutor's office has made the request," ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia said.

Austrian Green Party security spokesman Peter Pilz told a news conference there was "credible evidence" that Iranian President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was involved in the 1989 assassination of Iranian exile Kurdish opposition leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou and two other Kurdish politicians in Vienna.

"Yesterday the state prosecutor's office asked the Anti-Terrorism Task Force to begin an investigation into the allegations about the 1989 triple murder," Pilz told reporters.

In addition to Ahmadinejad, Pilz said former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was at the centre of the newly reopened investigation.

Pilz said it was up to the prosecutor's office to decide whether to request that Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad be questioned.

Iranian officials were not immediately available for comment. On Saturday a senior aide to Ahmadinejad in Tehran said Pilz's charges were "not even worth commenting on. It is like the other accusations and there will be more accusations."

ANTI-TERRORISM FORCE

Pilz said his accusation was based on information he received from an Iranian journalist living in France who Pilz calls only "Witness D". Pilz gave this information to the Interior Ministry and the Anti-Terrorism Task Force, which then forwarded it to the state prosecutor's office for evaluation.

"I cannot personally say whether the allegations of Witness D are true, but I can say that they are credible," Pilz said.

Witness D's information came from one of the alleged gunmen, who contacted Witness D in 2001 but later drowned, Pilz said.

One of the reasons that Witness D appeared credible is that he knows details that only someone with access to Austrian investigators' classified files could know, he said.

Pilz said Witness D had no ties to any exiled Iranian political groups in France.

Many members of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and its militant wing, the People's Mujahideen Organisation, are based in Paris. Both oppose Iran's Islamic government and are listed by the U.S. State Department as terrorist organisations.

Several former hostages who were held by Iranian militants after the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy have accused Ahmadinejad of taking part in the 444-day hostage drama which led Washington to break ties with Tehran.

The president-elect's office and several hostage-takers have denied Ahmadinejad helped storm the embassy. Pilz said that Witness D had no information to support the allegations that Ahmadinejad was involved in the U.S. hostage-taking.
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 9:46 pm    Post subject: Bani Sadr confirmed Ahmadinejad was one of the kidnapper Reply with quote

Ahmadinejad said among embassy kidnappers

TEL AVIV, Israel, July 4 (UPI) -- Former Iranian president Bani Sadr reportedly confirmed that President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the kidnappers at the U.S. Embassy in 1979.

The kidnappers held 52 people from hostage for 444 days.

Bani Sadr, who was president during part of that time and is now in exile in Paris, told a Yediot Aharonot reporter Ahmadinejad in the embassy throughout the hostage crisis.

"Ayatollah Khomeini's deputy, Ayatollah Khamenai, demanded of him a constant report on what is happening in the embassy," said Bani Sadr.

Bani Sadr laughed when he was told that Ahmadinejad denies it.

"What do you want? That he should not deny it?," he said. "I was president and I know the details and I am telling you for sure that he was there, though his role was not organizational. He was the chief reporter to Khamenai."

One of the U.S. hostages said he recognized Ahmadinejad as one of the kidnappers.
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 06, 2005 9:55 pm    Post subject: Ahmadinejad Link to Al Qaeda Reply with quote

Dan Darling, WindsOfChange.net reminds us that Ahmadinejad was a founder of the Qods force in Iran which has long had close ties with Al Qaeda.

Jerusalem Force is Qods Force, for those of you just joining us. And just how close Ahmadinejad still is with them may well come back into the news again given a story that first appeared in the Washington Post back in 2003. The headline "Iranian Force Has Long Ties to Al Qaeda" says it all, but here are some relevant excerpts:

Qods (Jerusalem) Force
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 07, 2005 8:55 am    Post subject: Ahmadinejad Complete Bio - In His Own Writing Reply with quote

http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/iran.asp

http://freethoughts.splinder.com


freeandseculariran@yahoogroups.com

Iran's President-Elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Complete Bio - In His Own Writing

1 July 2005: Is the president-elect of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one of the hostage-takers at the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979? The Northeast Intelligence Network called upon its Farsi-language resources to help determine the answer to this question. Sure enough, the answer is readily found on the official website of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, written entirely in Farsi, and complete with images. The website includes various documents from Ahmadinegad’s campaign where he claims "I Can Control the Americans - I Have Experience Doing It". In one particularly disturbing document, he claims that if elected, he will “bring the death that the Shi’ite are experiencing in Iraq to the streets of America with the volunteer martyr brigades that are ready to act.”

Ahmadinegad claims that under his leadership “America will not stop Iran from its uranium programs. Iran has a right to defend itself against the Zionist sons of pigs and apes.” He says that he “knows how to control the US and will do so when the time is right.”

The website in fact boasts of his involvement in the Embassy takeover, even posting photographs of Ahmadinegad and his fellow students.



The website claims that this photograph was taken inside the US Embassy in Tehran in 1980.

The official biography on Ahmadinejad’s website leaves little doubt as to his involvement in the 1979 embassy takeover:

Born in Garmsar, east of Tehran in 1956

4th child of 7

Working class family

Father was a blacksmith

Family moved to south Tehran in 1957

Graduated high school

Enrolled Elm-o Sanaat University 1975 studying engineering

Became leave of student activist group at Elm-o Sanaat University

Founded the Islamic Students Association at Elm-o Sanaat shortly after fall of shah

1979 became representative from Elm-o Sanaat at the Office of Strengthening Unity between Students and Theological Seminaries (OSU) (OSU set up by Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, top confidant to Ayatullah Khomeini

Ahmadinejad and other members of OSU central council including Ibrahim Asgharzadeh, Mohsen Mirdamadi, Mohsen Kadivar, Mohsen Aghajari, and Abbas Abdi regularly met with Khomeini

Mirdamadi and Abdi suggested to OSU that US embassy be stormed. Ahmadinejad recommended storming the Soviet embassy at the same time.

During 1980 “Islamic Cultural Revolution" Ahmadinejad and the OSU assisted in purging dissident lecturers and students - many arrested and later executed.

1980 - Ahmadinejad joined Revolutionary Guards

1980s, Ahmadinejad employed as interrogator and torturer the Internal Security department of Revolutionary Guard.

Iran government website Baztab, claims Ahmadinejad worked as an executioner in the notorious Evin Prison.

1986 became senior officer in Special Brigade. Revolutionary Guard, at Ramazan Garrison (Ramazan Garrison was the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards' "extra-territorial operations", a euphemism for terrorist attacks beyond Iran's borders.)

Governor, Maku and Khoy (towns in NW Iran)

1993 appointed governor of Ardebil Province

1997 return to Elm-o Sanaat University to teach and organize Ansar el Hezbollah

2003 became major of Tehran; founded Abadgaran-e Iran-e Islami party


An opposition website claims the following:

In Kermanshah, Ahmadinejad became involved in the clerical regime's terrorist operations abroad and led many "extra-territorial operations of the IRGC". With the formation of the elite Qods (Jerusalem) Force of the IRGC, Ahmadinejad became one of its senior commanders. He was the mastermind of a series of assassinations in the Middle East and Europe, including the assassination of Iranian Kurdish leader Abdorrahman Qassemlou, who was shot dead by senior officers of the Revolutionary Guards in a Vienna flat in July 1989. Ahmadinejad was a key planner of the attack, according to sources in the Revolutionary Guards.

Of course, if you have doubts you can always contact him directly. The contact page on his website at http://mardomyar.com/aspx/contactme.asp lists his email address as: drahmadinejad@gmail.com

Additional photographs and information is being provided to the subscribers of the HQ INTEL-ALERT newsletter in a special briefing.

Iranian President Elect: "I Can Control the Americans - I Have Experience Doing It"

Iranian President-Elect Boasts of Role in 1979 Embassy Take-over Found in Farsi Language Documents

30 June 2005: Research and investigation conducted by the Northeast Intelligence Network is beginning to substantiate what five former American hostages of the 1979 Iranian embassy take-over have been saying – current Iranian President-elect Mahmoud Amadinejad was one of their captors. In fact, documents found published in Farsi suggest that not only was Amadinejad one of their captors, he was one of the masterminds behind the embassy take-over where Islamic fundamentalists held Americans for 444 days.

Documents reviewed in Farsi strongly implicate the current Iranian President in his role in the 1979 take-over.

Developing…
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 28, 2005 7:01 pm    Post subject: U.S. persists in checking Iran leader '79 role Reply with quote

U.S. persists in checking Iran leader '79 role

By Tabassum Zakaria

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050728/wl_nm/iran_usa_dc_3


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran's president-elect was a leader in the student movement that organized the 1979 U.S. embassy takeover and the United States still is trying to determine if he was a hostage taker, the White House said on Thursday.

U.S. authorities have been checking into assertions by some former American hostages that Ahmadinejad was involved in the siege on the U.S. Embassy that lasted 444 days. Ahmadinejad takes office on Tuesday.

"We've looked into the allegations that were made about his involvement in the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. We know he was a leader of the student movement that organized the attack on the embassy and the taking of American hostages," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

"However, we are still looking into whether or not he was actually one of the hostage-takers," he said.

Ahmadinejad, and several hostage-takers, have denied he was involved in storming the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and holding 52 hostages in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

The United States has not resumed diplomatic relations with Iran since that 1979-1981 crisis. President Bush had labeled Iran a member of an "axis of evil," and the United States considers it a state sponsor of terrorism.

Iran considers the United States its arch enemy.

Several American hostages said they recognized Ahmadinejad from pictures published after his election and that they believed he was one of the captors.

U.S. intelligence agencies are trying to determine what role Ahmadinejad may have played.

Photos widely published in the media several weeks ago showing a hostage taker raised speculation about whether it was a young Ahmadinejad.

But a U.S. official who declined to be identified said there were "significant discrepancies" in some of the facial features between the man in the photo and Iran's president-elect.

"His precise role in the takeover of the U.S. Embassy and holding of U.S. hostages is not yet resolved, but he was a student leader," the official said.
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 29, 2005 5:39 pm    Post subject: U.S. Wants Response to Iran Allegations Reply with quote

U.S. Wants Response to Iran Allegations
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050729/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_iran_1

WASHINGTON - The State Department on Friday called on Iran to respond clearly to allegations that its incoming president was a leader of the student movement that orchestrated the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

"It is the responsibility of the Iranian government to respond to these charges frankly and clearly," said spokesman Sean McCormack.

The White House said Thursday that Iran's incoming president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was a leader of the student movement during a fundamentalist revolution that overthrew the pro-U.S. Shah and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

Six former hostages have identified the president-elect as one of their captors.

McCormack said those former hostages "have talked very specifically about what they remember as his participation in interrogations."

"I don't think that we have heard definitively from them on that score," he said of Iran's leaders.

An ongoing U.S. investigation has not produced "anything that would contradict what these former hostages have said," McCormack said.

Other ex-hostages have said they have no basis for making such accusations.

McCormack declined to say whether the investigation had corroborated the allegations involving Iran's incoming president.

"I would say that we remain very concerned over charges regarding President-elect Ahmadinejad," the spokesman said. "The taking of the American embassy is something many Americans remember with both outrage and disgust."
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