Following-up from my post yesterday, MSNBC (with video) quotes the former Iran hostages saying Ahmadinejad was indeed a 1979 captor:

SAVANNAH, Ga. - Almost a quarter-century after they were taken captive in Iran, five former American hostages say they got an unexpected reminder of their 444-day ordeal in the bearded face of Iran’s new president-elect.

Watching coverage of Iran’s presidential election on television dredged up 25-year-old memories that prompted four of the former hostages to exchange e-mails. And those four realized they shared the same conclusion — the firm belief that President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been one of their Iranian captors.

“This is the guy. There’s no question about it,” said former hostage Chuck Scott, a retired Army colonel who lives in Jonesboro, Ga. “You could make him a blond and shave his whiskers, put him in a zoot suit and I’d still spot him.”

Scott and former hostages David Roeder, William J. Daugherty and Don A. Sharer told The Associated Press on Wednesday they have no doubt Ahmadinejad, 49, was one of the hostage-takers. A fifth ex-hostage, Kevin Hermening, said he reached the same conclusion after looking at photos.

Some ex-hostages disagree:

Former hostage and retired Air Force Col. Thomas E. Schaefer said he doesn’t recognize Ahmadinejad, by face or name, as one of his captors.

Another former hostage, Paul Lewis, said he thought Ahmadinejad looked vaguely familiar when he saw a picture of him on the news last week, but the former Marine embassy guard said he could not be certain.

“My memories were more of the gun barrel, not the people behind it,” Lewis said.

Three of the former hostages say Ahmadinejad was “extremely cruel”:

Scott, Roeder, Daugherty and Sharer said they have been exchanging e-mails since seeing Ahmadinejad emerge as a serious contender in Iran’s elections.

“He was extremely cruel,” said Sharer, of Bedford, Ind. “He’s one of the hard-liners. So that tells you where their government’s going to stand for the next four to five years.”

After seeing recent newspaper photos, Sharer said, “I don’t have any doubts” that Ahmadinejad was a hostage-taker.

[snip]

One of the guards, whom Scott called Akbar, would sometimes let Scott and Sharer out to walk the narrow, 20-foot hallway outside their cells, he said. One day, Scott said, the man he believes was Ahmadinejad saw them walking and chastised the guard.

“He was the security chief, supposedly,” Scott said. “When he found out Akbar had let us out of our cells at all, he chewed out Akbar. I speak Farsi. He said, ‘These guys are dogs, they’re pigs, they’re animals. They don’t deserve to be let out of their cells.”’

Scott recalled responding to the man’s stare by openly cursing his captor in Farsi. “He looked a little flustered like he didn’t know what to do. He just walked out.”

[snip]

Roeder said he’s sure Ahmadinejad was present during one of his interrogations when the hostage-takers threatened to kidnap his son in the U.S. and “start sending pieces — toes and fingers of my son — to my wife.”

“It was almost like he was checking on the interrogation techniques they were using in a sort of adviser capacity,” Roeder said.

Ahmadinejad denies:

Rowhani, the aide to Ahmadinejad, said Ahmadinejad said during the recent meeting that he stopped opposing the embassy seizure after the revolution’s leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, expressed support for it. But the president-elect said he never took part.

“Definitely he was not among the students who took part in the seizure,” said Abbas Abdi, the leader of the hostage-takers. Abdi has since become a leading supporter of reform and sharply opposed Ahmadinejad. “He was not part of us. He played no role in the seizure, let alone being responsible for security” for the students.