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.
