buenos aires, argentina | Argentine Jewish groups are reacting with enthusiasm, but also caution, to a prosecutor’s demand for the arrest of a former Iranian president and seven others in connection with the 1994 bombing of Argentina’s main Jewish center, the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association.
Most victims’ relatives’ groups, the Jewish central institutions and local government officials, as well as political leaders, welcomed the 800-page statement presented Oct. 25.
Twelve years after the Jewish cultural center was bombed, killing 85 people and wounding some 300, prosecutors in a special investigative unit demanded that former Iranian President Ali Rafsanjani and another seven Iranians, including some who still hold official positions in Iran, be arrested.
The call by prosecutors Alberto Nisman and Marcelo Martinez Burgos comes after previous investigations had been repudiated as biased and false. Based on an extensive search of phone records, they concluded that the attack was planned on Aug. 14, 1993, in the Iranian city of Mashad. According to the prosecutors, the motive was that Argentina had stopped assisting Iran with nuclear technology in 1991.
The prosecutors’ call reprises the original investigative tack — first suggested by Mossad and the CIA — that pointed to Iran as behind the attack.
Prosecutors for the former judge in charge of the case, Juan Jose Galeano — who eventually was disqualified for bribing a witness — also had demanded the capture of 12 Iranians. Interpol rejected the demand, however.
The investigative judge currently in charge of the case, Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, will have to decide whether to ask for the Iranians’ capture and extradition.
“Measures supported by law will be taken,” Canicoba Corral told the Argentine news agency Dyn.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman termed the prosecutors’ call “progress in the investigation,” and said that if the Justice Ministry decided to demand the Iranians’ capture, the Foreign Ministry would do all it could to help.
Leaders of the Argentine Jewish community welcomed the development.
But some said the call demonstrated a “black hole” concerning Argentine participation in the attack.
Sofia Guterman was the mother of Andrea Guterman, 28, died in the bombing.
Guterman went to the prosecutors’ office recently to receive a copy of the report herself.
“I was pleased to see the Iranian people accused, with their faces displayed at the judiciary office,” she said. But, she added, “As a mother, searching for justice, it’s still not enough for me.”