buenos aires (jta) | With the 12th anniversary of the bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires coming next week, Argentina's Jewish community is focusing on investigations into the country's former president and one of his Cabinet ministers.

Once divided over the complexities of the probe into the July 18, 1994 attack at the AMIA center, the Jewish community is calling for a full investigation of former President Carlos Menem and his interior minister, Carlos Corach, for allegedly preventing an impartial investigation into the case.

Even if the probe never gets to the bottom of the AMIA attack, which killed 85 people and wounded 300, it should help determine if and why there was a conspiracy to convict innocent people in the original AMIA trial. Was it total incompetence or a frame-up?

Increasingly, it seems likely that federal Judge Ariel Lijo will call Menem for interrogation.

A brief submitted late last month by Menem's former intelligence chief, Hugo Anzorreguy, directly implicated Menem in a $400,000 payoff apparently made by Judge Juan Jose Galeano to one of the key witnesses to alter his testimony and finger Buenos Aires police officials in the bombing.

The three-year trial — conducted by a three-judge body — of those police officials ended in 2003 with across-the-board acquittals. The verdict also called for a full investigation of Galeano, two of his prosecutors, three top intelligence officials, the top Jewish community leader, and the witness who reportedly received the payment. Galeano was impeached from the bench last year.

Lijo is investigating the irregularities, which go far beyond the money believed to have been paid to the witness.

Menem left office in 1999. He has faced a litany of court cases, mainly on corruption charges, and was jailed for a short time in 2001.

Last year he lost a senatorial election but won enough votes to attain a minority seat in the Upper House. It is unclear whether Menem's legislative position would exempt him from being interrogated by Lijo.