World

'Kandahar' Actor Real-Life Assassin?

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

January 3, 2002 / 8:24 AM EST / CBS

A Maryland prosecutor says an actor who played a doctor in the critically acclaimed Iranian film "Kandahar" is an American fugitive accused of assassinating an Iranian exile leader in suburban Washington in 1980.

"It's him, there's no doubt," State's Attorney Douglas F. Gansler told the New York Times. He said the actor, Hassan Tantai, was actually David Belfield, an American who converted to Islam.

"He's an assassin, he's a terrorist and he's a fugitive from justice," Gansler told the newspaper.

Belfield plays the role of an African-American doctor in the film, which depicts Taliban oppression in Afghanistan.

Gansler told the Times that after seeing the movie, he took steps to confirm that the actor was in fact Belfield.

Belfield is accused of assassinating Ali Akbar Tabatabai, the former press attaché at the Iranian Embassy in Washington and a critic of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Authorities charge that Belfield pulled up to Tabatabai's suburban Washington house in a postal truck that he borrowed from a friend. He wore a mailman's outfit, complete with a pith hat that allowed him to pass through tight security at the home.

When Tabatabai came to the door, Belfield fired off three shots from the gun he had hidden in a package he carried, and then fled. Tabatabai died later that day; Belfield made his way to revolutionary Iran and freedom.

Belfield is now known as Daoud Salahuddin.

"There's a certain irony in the movie role," prosecutor Gansler told the Times. "In 1980, our man kills an Iranian dissident in behalf of an oppressive government. Now he's in a movie critical of oppression."

Mohsen Makhmalbaf, the director of "Kandahar," said in a statement that he did not know whether or not the actor was the fugitive wanted for the slaying.