Mr. Abbas Abdi This is Me

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1. 1. www.globalsecuritynews.com

   www.globalsecuritynews.com/sho - [Cached]

   Published on: 4/15/2007   Last Visited: 4/15/2007

   Those rejected included Ibrahim Yazdi, the former foreign minister; Hamid Reza Jalaiepour, publisher of the newspaper Salaam before it was banned; Abbas Abdi, editor of Salaam; and Azam Taleghani, a woman who had tried to run for president.

2. 2. www.jamesbancroft.net

   www.jamesbancroft.net/id16.htm - [Cached]

   Last Visited: 3/27/2007

   In interviews conducted by TIME with Rosen in New York City and Abdi in Tehran, they said they were encouraged to meet after Iranian President Mohammed Khatami's call last January--quickly taken up by President Clinton--for cultural exchanges aimed at bringing down the "wall of mistrust" between their two nations.
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   The idea for the meeting originated with Iranian moderates who were friends of Abdi's.
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   Agrees Abdi, 42, a columnist for Salam, a Tehran newspaper: "The aim is to contribute to a better understanding and promote a normalization of relations." That is easier said than done. Plans for a London meeting were aborted when British authorities refused Abdi a visa. He has had to make his preparations in utmost secrecy lest Iran's still powerful hard-liners detain him before his departure for France. Once a fervent supporter of Iran's clerical regime, Abdi was arrested in 1993 and spent nearly a year in prison for criticizing the mullahs' aversion to democracy.
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   Will a public reconciliation with Abdi create a backlash in Iran against the rapprochement that Rosen deeply hopes for?
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   Or will Abdi somehow publicly embarrass him? While Abdi is ready to shake hands, Rosen is reluctant to commit himself until the moment comes.
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   Among those militants was Abdi. In an interview at his spare Tehran office a few blocks from the old U.S. embassy--now a school for the Revolutionary Guards--the Iranian provided rare insight into the takeover and his role in it. The students' aim was to force the U.S. government to extradite the deposed Shah. They genuinely feared, Abdi insists, that the Shah's arrival in New York City in 1979 for medical treatment was part of a U.S. plot to restore him to power, as was done by a CIA-engineered coup d'etat in 1953. Abdi denies that Ayatullah Khomeini ordered the embassy seizure or knew about it beforehand. "The way we saw it, the Imam would either approve of the action afterward or disapprove of it, in which case we would have left the embassy," says Abdi. At 7 a.m. on takeover day, Abdi held a secret meeting with 130 students he had summoned to a hall at Tehran Polytechnic University, where he was leader of the Organization of Islamic Students. He described the takeover plans, gave out assignments and ID badges and told the students to head, one by one, to the embassy, where they would meet up with recruits from other universities. As hundreds thronged into the compound, Abdi's task was to seize the embassy's visa offices while others handled the main building and the ambassador's residence. According to Abdi, the restraint shown by U.S. Marine guards may have averted a bloodbath. Had they shot and killed any of the students, he says, he and other leaders planned to depart and leave the compound to be engulfed by the mob.
   
   Abdi says he never guarded the hostages and has no recollection of meeting Rosen personally. The Iranian still justifies taking the prisoners as a defense against a potential U.S.-backed coup d'etat, holds American support for a despotic ruler partly responsible for provoking the students and tends to downplay the ill treatment of the hostages. However, Abdi echoes the conciliatory words spoken by President Khatami.
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   "No one likes hurting others," Abdi says. "The Iranians regret what the hostages and their relatives endured." He adds that he can understand why Americans felt that hostage taking was wrong.
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   Rosen and Abdi may already have begun writing the next chapter.
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   On Friday, Rosen shook hands with Abbas Abdi, who helped organize the embassy seizure.
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   Abdi said the students thought the takeover on November 4, 1979, would last no more than a week. The hostages were freed on January 21, 1981. He called the occupation "the most nonviolent possible measure taken ... in response to what the United States had done."
   
   Abdi, 42, now a senior editor at the previously hard-line newspaper Salaam, acknowledged that he was among those who planned the event.
   
   "I could be taken hostage for 444 days," Abdi said. "This I could overlook. "But taking a nation hostage for 25 years," he said, "needs more apologies."
   
   The hostage crisis was but "a row of bricks in this tall wall (of mistrust)," Abdi said.
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   "I'm here with Mr. Abdi, because I want to see Americans and Iranians turn that difficult corner away from mutual demonizing," Rosen said.
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   "The past cannot be altered," said Abdi. "Instead, we must focus on the years ahead and endeavor to build a better future," he said.
   
   Protesters disrupt meeting
   
   The hostage crisis remains a sensitive issue, even among Iranians. The start of the session was interrupted by two Iranian exiles who denounced Abdi as a "mass murderer" and a "terrorist."

3. 3. THE DAILY "SALAM" BANNED, CONTROVERSIAL PRESS BILL APPROVED IN THE MAJLES

   ivl.8m.com/news13.htm - [Cached]

   Published on: 4/6/2007   Last Visited: 10/4/2007

   "The source noted that the verdict was notified to newspaper's officials on phone ordering them not to publish the daily until further notice", IRNA reported in a short, laconic dispatch that was confirmed immediately during a press conference by Mr. Abbas Abdi, Salam's Deputy Editor who described the ban as "unprecedented".
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   In his press conference, Mr. Abdi said that the document in the possession of Salam is in Mr. Emami's own handwriting and only parts of it dealing with the press were published.