Teheran Students Seize U.S Embassy And Hold Hostages
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Ask Shah's Return And Trial
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Khomeini Said to Support Attack by Several Hundred Youths--No Casualties Reported
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Iran Students Seize U.S. Embassy, Want the Shah Returned for Trial
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By REUTERS

Teheran, Iran, Nov. 4, 1979--Moslem students stormed the United States Embassy in Teheran today, seized about 90 Americans and vowed to stay there until the deposed Shah was sent back from New York to face trial in Iran.

There were no reports of casualties in the takeover of the embassy building, although witnesses said some of the several hundred attackers were armed.

A student spokesman told reporters at the embassy that 100 hostages had been taken and that 90 percent of them were Americans. He said the embassy staff was being treated well.

Has Khomeini's Support

In the holy city of Qum, a spokesman for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini said the occupation of the embassy had the revolutionary leader's personal support.

[In New York City, a small group of Iranian students chained themselves to railings inside the Statue of Liberty for three hours and unfurled a banner from the monument's top demanding that the deposed Shah be returned to Iran. Page A11.]

Iranian Revolutionary Guards at the embassy gates did not intervene during the attack, which came as tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of the Iranian capital on the first anniversary of the shooting of students at Teheran University by the Shah's security forces. . . .

The Iranian Foreign Ministry, in a statement reported by the official Pars news agency, said:

Embassy Files Captured

" Today's move by a group of our compatriots is a natural reaction to the U.S. Government's indifference to the hurt feelings of the Iranian people about the presence of the deposed Shah, who is in the United States under the pretext of illness.

" If the U.S. authorities respected the feelings of the Iranian people and understood the depth of the Iranian revolution, they should have at least not allowed the deposed Shah into the country and should have returned his property."

The students showed reporters embassy files captured in the raid. They said staff in the building had been trying to burn documents when the embassy was taken over. . . . .

They read a statement they said they had received from Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, head of Iran's Constitutional Assembly of Experts, in which they quoted him as saying:

" A few days ago, the Iman said the Iranian nation must clean up its situation vis-a-vis the United States. This action is a kind of recognition of that situation. America must know it can't play with the feelings of the Iranian nation." The Imam referred to is Ayatollah Khomeini.

The embassy takeover followed a series of strongly anti-American speeches by Ayatollah Khomeini, who said recently he hoped reports that the former Shah, Mohammed Riza Pahlevi, was dying of cancer were true. The Shah, who was deposed in the revolution led by the Ayatollah last January, is being treated for cancer at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.

The official Iranian radio broadcast a statement by the Islamic Society of University Teachers and Students commending the embassy takeover. "We defend the capture of this imperialist embassy, which is a center for espionage," the statement said. . . . .