Protesters Denounce Iranian President as a ‘Terrorist’

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The New York Sun

Two of the Americans seized by Iranian students in the 1979 hostage crisis staged a protest yesterday afternoon of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, outside Tehran’s mission to the United Nations.


On the sidewalk in front of 622 Third Ave., more than 30 protesters denounced Mr. Ahmadinejad – whom former hostages have identified as one of their captors and tormentors during the 444-day standoff – as a “terrorist” and excoriated the United Nations and the Bush administration for facilitating the Iranian leader’s visit to Turtle Bay.


Yesterday’s protest, timed to coincide with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s speech before the 60th session of the General Assembly, was also meant to raise American awareness and to prompt congressional action against the Islamic Republic, one of the former hostages, Barry Rosen, said.


The protesters – actors hired to dramatize the ex-hostages’ grievances – wore execution-style black blindfolds and wore placards around their necks with the names and photographs of former hostages. Standing before them, Mr. Rosen, a New York resident and an instructor at Columbia University Teachers College, gestured toward an orange banner that proclaimed “52 hostages + 444 days + 25 years = No justice.” He spoke of being held and interrogated at gunpoint by his Iranian captors, and he said, “Never in 25 years were we compensated in any way, shape, or form.”


Another ex-hostage, Kevin Hermening, said that in the 25 years since the crisis, America had treated Iran with a “business as usual” approach. In light of the Islamic Republic’s efforts to build a nuclear-weapons program, he and Mr. Rosen said, it was particularly important that America and the international community send a stronger signal about their intolerance of Iranian terror.


Mr. Ahmadinejad’s connections to Iranian terrorism and the hostage crisis were the subject of a press conference held later in the afternoon by Messrs. Rosen and Hermening; the son of the hostage Bert Moore, who said he was there to represent “people who have family members sucked into the dark holes of police states,” and Iranian dissidents. In a conference room at the Beekman Hotel, Mr. Hermening, with voice trembling, spoke of his imprisonment at the hands of Mr. Ahmadinejad and other students – describing his time in a 5-by-10-foot cell and his 43 days in solitary confinement after a thwarted escape attempt. Mr. Hermening also expressed concern that Mr. Ahmadinejad would be meeting later with Iranian-Americans in an effort to convince them to lobby President Bush to refrain from imposing further sanctions on the Islamic Republic.


Also at the press conference, a former Iranian prisoner, Joseph Pirayoff, recounted through an interpreter the physical abuses he suffered at the hands of a previously unknown tormentor. Upon seeing photos of the new Iranian president, who was elected in July, Mr. Pirayoff made the connection. “I am sure Mr. Ahmadinejad is the same person who broke my jaw and took the hostages,” Mr. Pirayoff said.


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