Former captor of US hostages severely beaten in Iran
TEHRAN, Dec 23 (AFP) - A political activist who helped orchestrate an
attack on the former US embassy in Tehran in 1979 was severely beaten by
a group of Islamic fundamentalists while delivering a public speech, a
newspaper reported Wednesday.
Ebrahim Asghar-Zadeh, a former left-wing MP and now a supporter of President
Mohammad Khatami, was attacked by the extremists after addressing students
at the University of Hamedan, a town southwest of Tehran, on Sunday, the
daily Zan (Woman) said.
Asghar-Zadeh, who is in his mid-forties, was badly injured and hospitalised,
it added.
His driver and a number of other students were also injured.
Asghar-Zadeh, a member of the Office for the Reinforcement of Unity
(ORU), an umbrella organisation of several pro-Khatami student groups,
was one of the student leaders who help organize the seizure of the Us
embassy on November 4, 1979.
The students were angry over US support for the late shah, who was toppled
in the 1979 Islamic revolution, and his admission to the United States.
With the blessing of Iranian leaders, they took the staff at the embassy
hostage and held 53 of them for 444 days, a move which led Washington to
break diplomatic ties with Tehran.
Asqar-Zadeh angered hardline conservatives after he invited, on the
19th anniversary of the sezure of the embassy last month, former American
hostages to visit Iran for "reconciliation and to be the guests of
our people."
The invitation was made in line with Khatami's call early this year
for greater contact between American and Iranian people to "crack
in the wall of mistrust" between the two nations.
But conservative hardliners are vehemently opposed to a rapprochement
and last month they attacked a group of visiting Americans, after accusing
them of being CIA spies.
