He seemed like a hero for the times. A black American doctor who had fought with the mujahideen against the Russians and had returned to treat women suffering under the Taliban, writes Fiachra Gibbons, in London.
Except that the actor who plays the character in Kandahar - the film about Afghanistan which received so much acclaim that President Bush asked for a private screening - has now been accused of being an Islamic terrorist who assassinated an Iranian dissident in the United States.
The bizarre allegations surround a man credited in the film as Hassan Tantai, but who a US official insists is David Belfield, an American Muslim convert and the prime suspect in the murder of former Iranian diplomat Ali Akbar Tabatabai, a leading critic of Ayatollah Khameini, who was shot dead outside his home near Washington in 1980.
Tantai, a 50-year-old journalist who worked for the state-owned Iran Daily newspaper after moving to Tehran in 1980 before becoming a mujahideen in neighbouring Afghanistan, could not be contacted last night, but the film's director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, said: "I never ask those who act in my films what they've done before."
Mr Doug Gansler, the Maryland state attorney in charge of the case, said: "We are very confident that the man who appears in the film is indeed David Belfield.
"He's an assassin and he's a terrorist," said Mr Gansler.
He claims that even after 21 years Belfield, who changed his name to Daoud Salahuddin on his conversion in 1969, but who Mr Gansler alleges worked in Iran as Hassan Abdul Rahman before changing it again to Hassan Tantai, is recognisable.
In an interview with an Iranian film website to promote the film, Tantai admitted that like many black Americans of his age, his identity was elastic.
Although he has a major part, Tantai's performance is not among the more memorable in the film, which broke the box office record for the highest earnings on a single screen when it was shown at the ICA in London last month.
The film finishes tonight at the Irish Film Centre in Dublin.
Asked why Makhmalbaf - who has a reputation for playfully putting the cat among the pigeons in Iran with such films as The Apple - had cast him, Tantai said: "The director got wind of a black American in Tehran who had been in Afghanistan, and when he began to locate people to fill those slots, he did not have many choices."
The White House last night would not be drawn on whether Mr Bush, not known until now for his love of Iranian cinema, was aware of the actor's alleged terrorist links. - (Guardian Service)