Ex-Intelligence Officer Says Leader Not in Photo
A former top Iranian intelligence official said the hostage taker in a photograph made during the 1979 U.S. Embassy crisis is not president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but a militant who committed suicide in jail.
Saeed Hajjarian, a top advisor to departing President Mohammad Khatami, also denied an Austrian newspaper report and claims by Iranian dissidents that Ahmadinejad had a role in the 1989 slaying of an Iranian Kurd opposition leader and two associates in Vienna.
Six former hostages who saw Ahmadinejad in photos or on television said they believed he was among the captors.
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