Argentine President and Foreign Minister in Alleged Cover Up of Iran’s 1994 AMIA Jewish Center Bombing

 

Argentine President Christina de Fernandez Kirchner and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman

Credit the relentless Argentine Prosecutor Alberto Nisman with endeavoring to bring closure to the 1994 AMIA Jewish Center Bombing in Buenos Aires that took 85 lives and injured hundreds.  Nisman  now has found both Argentina President Christina de Fernandez Kirchner and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman engaged in a massive cover up of a deal to lift charges against the Iranian regime for planning and perpetrating the AMIA bombing in exchange for oil.  Ynet news reported these latest developments in an article, “Prosecutor: Argentine president tried to whitewash 1994 AMIA bombing”:

State prosecutor Alberto Nisman, investigating the blast that killed 85 people, said Kirchner has pushed to drop the criminal investigation and normalize relations as a way of tapping Iranian oil needed to narrow Argentina’s $7 billion per year energy gap.

Oil would be exchanged for Argentine grains under the government’s plan, Nisman said.

                Nisman said he issued a request that a judge interrogate Kirchner and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman “for being authors and accomplices of an aggravated cover-up and obstruction of justice regarding the Iranians accused of the AMIA terrorist attack.”

Argentine courts accuse Iran of sponsoring the bombing. Iran, in preparatory talks with the United States to end its standoff with world powers over its nuclear program, denies links to the attack.

In 2013 Kirchner signed a “truth commission” deal with Iran to jointly investigate the 1994 bombing.

Nisman said Kirchner opened a back channel to the Iranian government aimed at getting the charges thrown out. The idea, Nisman said, was to sign the truth commission pact as a step toward deactivating the arrest warrants.

Kirchner said at the time that the pact would reactivate the probe, but the move was denounced by Israel and Jewish groups that said it threatened to derail proper criminal prosecution of the case. The truth commission pact was later struck down by an Argentine court.

These stunning accusations come on the close of Kirchner’s second term with a pending Presidential election in October 2015.  She is barred from running for a third term.

Reuters  reported  a judge in the AMIA case accusing Nisman of  prosecutorial overreach:

Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, the judge in charge of the 1994 bombing case, told state radio that he was not consulted as he should have been about the prosecutor’s investigation into Fernandez.

He also said evidence put forth by the state prosecutor, including recorded telephone calls in which Nisman says state security agents talked with the bombing suspects, was flawed.

“When the wiretaps are done without control, they are not irrefutable,” Canicoba Corral said. “Nisman took it upon himself to initiate an investigation without judicial control.”

In  early 2103, we posted on the Truth Commission, its controversial  approval by the Argentine Senate and the justification  for it by Foreign Minister, Timerman, son of controversial  Argentine Jewish human rights advocate and journalist, Jacopo.   We wrote:

A trade deal  with Iran  may have been the principal reason behind a deal cut for creation of a South African-style Truth Commission in which Argentine judges would hear testimony from former Revolutionary Guard Commander and now  Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi.   There is an outstanding Interpol warrant for the arrests of  Vahidi as there was for the late Hezbollah terrorist mastermind, Imad Mughniyah, assassinated in Damascus by a Mossad hit team in February 2008.  The 2007 Interpol arrest warrant was issued given substantial evidence that Iran had perpetrated the 1994 AMIA Argentine Jewish Community bombing.  An earlier 1992 Israeli Embassy bombing in Buenos Aires that killed 29 and injured more than 242 persons was suspected of also being perpetrated by Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

The architect of the Truth Commission treaty with Iran is the Jewish Foreign Minister of Argentina, Hector Timerman, whose late father, Jacopo, was a human rights icon and publisher who was jailed and then deported by the ruling military junta in the early 1980’s.  Israel gave the elder Timerman, author of the acclaimed, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, sanctuary, only to have him criticize the Jewish  state for its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  Jacopo Timerman returned to Buenos Aires where he passed away in 1993.

Hector Timerman had been severely criticized for his instrumental role in negotiating and concluding a Truth Commission with the Islamic regime.  His fellow co-religionists in Argentina and the State of Israel expressed outrage  for betraying justice due the victims of the 1992 Israeli Embassy and 1994 AMIA Jewish Community blasts.  The leadership of the Argentine Jewish community organized protest rallies this past weekend in Buenos Aires and issued statements criticizing Timerman.

In 2013, General Prosecutor Nisman released a 500 page indictment of the Islamic regime indicating that the 1992 Israeli Embassy and 1994 AMIA bombings were part of a comprehensive plan to infiltrate and export terrorism, in part,  to facilitate acquisition of uranium for Iran nuclear program.  The Washington, DC-based Foundation for Defense of Democracy in a summary report on the Nisman indictment noted that he  “accused the Iranian regime, and Mohsen Rabbani of infiltrating Latin American countries building local clandestine intelligence stations designed to foster and execute terrorist attacks within the principles of exporting the Iranian Revolution.”