Nisman died mysteriously in 2015, but the story goes back to 1994…
Jewish center bombing casts shadow over Argentine politics 23 years on. Former president Kirchner ordered arrested on suspicion of covering up Iran’s role in terror attack that killed 85 in return for lucrative trade deals
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — The bomb blast that ripped through a Jewish center in Buenos Aires and killed 85 people in 1994 continues to cause shock waves in Argentina’s politics.
Twenty-three years after the bombing, two former presidents have been indicted, a slew of Iranian officials are accused, a campaigning prosecutor is dead from a bullet in the head, but no one has ever been charged in the original attack.
On Thursday, a prosecuting magistrate ordered the arrest of former president Cristina Kirchner and called on the Senate to begin procedures to strip her of parliamentary immunity.
On July 18, 1994, a bomb destroyed the headquarters of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), leaving 85 dead and 300 people wounded.
It followed the bombing of Israel’s embassy in Buenos Aires two years earlier, which killed 29 people and wounded 200.
Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah terror is accused of the carrying out bombings at Iran’s demand.
Alberto Nisman was appointed special prosecutor by Kirchner’s husband, then president Nestor Kirchner, and he quickly showed his investigation would be far-reaching.
On his request, British authorities in 2003 arrested Iran’s former ambassador to Buenos Aires, Hadi Soleimanpour, but he was released on bail for lack of evidence.
APF.com, 8 December 2017
That’s the triggering event, that second bombing, aimed just as squarely at Jews as the attacks we’re used to seeing in the Middle East On Argentina’s scale it was a 9-11, Twin Towers type of catastrophe. They weren’t used to bombs going off in their largest city, killing scores of people.
The anti-semitic Iranian state is suspected. Thus, for a quarter of a century now, a huge, nasty question mark has hung over that memory. Was it a vicious, sideway strike at the Jewish state by targeting a major Jewish center in South America, as most allege?
And the further allegation is what brings us to Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman. He was chief among those who claimed that the investigation into Iranian involvement was soft-peddled deliberately, in exchange for political favors.
Read on:
Argentina’s former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has appeared in court, where she denied covering up for Iranians accused of involvement in a 1994 bombing at a Buenos Aires Jewish center that left 85 people dead.
Calling the case an “absurdity”, Kirchner, who held office from 2007 until 2015, went on to attack the judge overseeing the case, which is based on charges first levelled two years ago by a federal prosecutor who was found dead in his homeshortly before he was due to present his allegations publicly.
“I don’t expect any justice from you,” Kirchner, reading from a 17-page prepared statement, told the federal judge Claudio Bonadío on Thursday.
Kirchner is facing accusations of treason and plotting a cover-up for signing a 2012 pact with Iran that would have allowed senior Iranian officials accused of the deadly attack to be investigated in their own country, rather than in Argentina.
Senators enjoy immunity from prosecution, although this week congress stripped a former minister in Kirchner’s government of his immunity as part of a corruption inquiry.
“This is a great judicial absurdity,” said Kirchner. “The aim of this judicial persecution is to intimidate opposition leaders in congress. They want a submissive congress.”
APF.com, 8 December 2017
It’s hard enough to judge politics in your own country, figure out what’s a genuine prosecution, what’s a set-up.
And the death of Nisman just before his much-anticipated speech?