The prosecutor investigating the worst terror strike on Argentine soil, the 1994 bombing of a Jewish charities building that killed 85 people, urged Iran on Saturday to hand over any suspects in the case.
The comments came after an Iranian Foreign Ministry statement said earlier in the day that Tehran, suspected by Argentina of being behind the attack, is “ready for a constructive dialogue” in the case and to cooperate with the Argentine government.
“If the Iranians and their government are ready to cooperate, they should do so once and for all and the only way possible — by handing over all of those accused in this terrible terrorist attack ... and not making statements devoid of content which lead nowhere,” prosecutor Alberto Nisman said in a statement.
Iran said it wanted “to shed all possible light within the framework of the law and to help in preventing the investigation from continuing on an erroneous course.”
Today marks 17 years since the bombing, which Argentine justice officials believe Tehran ordered. Iran has denied such allegations.
Iran “condemns all terrorist actions, especially the one against the Argentine Jewish center in 1994, and declares its solidarity with the families of the victims,” the Iranian statement added.
Israel has pointed the finger at the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah for carrying out the attacks, which the Jewish state believes were masterminded by Tehran.
Argentina has issued warrants for the arrest of Iranian Defense Minister Ahmed Vahidi along with five other Iranians and a Lebanese accused of planning and carrying out the bombing.
Both Iran and Hezbollah have consistently denied any involvement in the attacks.
In the 1994 attack, the bomb that leveled the seven-floor AMIA building also wounded 300 people.
Two years earlier, the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was hit by a bomb which killed 29 people and wounded 200.
Last month, Argentina’s Jewish community was outraged after a visit to Bolivia by Vahidi, noting that there had been an international arrest warrant out for him since 2007.
The La Paz government, in a letter to Argentina, said it had been unaware of any charges against Vahidi and said Bolivia “had taken steps to ensure that Mr Ahmad Vahidi left Bolivian territory immediately.”
However, Argentine Jewish community leader Aldo Donzis said the Bolivian government’s actions fell far short of what was required under the circumstances.
“It’s a huge farce that the Bolivian government asked him to leave the country after he had already completed his mission,” Donzis said.
“What was called for was not his expulsion, but his arrest,” he said.
Earlier this year, a press report in Argentina claimed that Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman had offered to shelve a probe into Iran’s involvement, which he strongly denied.
The March 26 report quoted a “secret” Iranian memo purportedly sent earlier this year by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad which said: “Argentina is no longer interested in solving those two attacks, but would rather improve its economic relations with Iran.”
According to the memo, allegedly written after a meeting in January between Timerman and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Buenos Aires was said to be “prepared to drop” the investigation in order to better its financial ties with Tehran.
Timerman said in April that the report was illogical and that Buenos Aires had nothing to gain economically by shelving the investigations.
“Argentina has no embargo against Iran and Iran has no embargo against Argentina, so what am I going to get by forgetting the investigation? What kind of commercial benefit?” he asked.
Argentina’s Jewish community numbers some 300,000 people, the largest in Latin America.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the