A court on Thursday absolved former Argentine president Carlos Menem of charges he tried to interfere with the investigation into the country’s deadliest terrorist incident — the bombing of a Jewish center in 1994 that killed 85 people.
A dozen other people also were acquitted of that charge.
The ruling by the three-judge panel came in a trial ordered in August 2015 on allegations that Menem and other officials tried to divert attention in the bombing investigation away from a Syrian businessman who was a Menem family friend.
Photo: AFP
“In these three years there was not a single element that could justify an illicit act on the part of the former president,” Menem’s lawyer, Omar Daer, told reporters after the sentence was delivered. “He feels relieved.”
A group of relatives of victims of the bombing at the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) criticized the finding.
“It is more than clear, and the evidence proves it, that the Menem government knew that the attack would happen and did absolutely nothing to avoid it, much less to clarify it,” the group Active Memory said. “He is and will be one of the principals responsible for impunity in the AMIA case.”
Menem was president from 1989 to 1999 and is now 88 years old. Even if convicted, he likely would have avoided prison due to his legal protections as a senator.
Nobody has been convicted of the truck bombing, although prosecutors have implicated several former Iranian officials in the attack. Iran’s government denies any involvement in the attack and has refused to turn over those people sought for trial in Argentina.
The bombing investigation was plagued by irregularities, according to a court ruling in 2004.
That court acquitted a number of people who had been charged as part of an alleged “local connection” in the attack.
The court asked for an investigation into members of the government and judicial system for their roles in the investigation’s problems.
Although acquitted on the interference allegation on Thursday, several of Menem’s codefendants were convicted on other charges.
Among the main codefendants, former federal judge Juan Jose Galeano, who headed the initial bombing investigation, was found guilty of embezzlement and malfeasance, and sentenced to six years in prison.
Former prosecutors Eamon Mullen and Jose Barbaccia were convicted of not fulfilling their duties as public officials and were each sentenced to two years in prison.
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