Argentina To Scrap Deal With Iran on 1994 Jewish Center Bombing Probe
Death Trap: Authorities gather outside Buenos Aires Jewish center where car bomb killed 29 people in 1994. Image by Getty images
Argentina’s president said she is ready to abrogate the country’s memorandum with Iran to jointly investigate the deadly 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing.
President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner challenged Jewish institutions and opposition political parties that rejected the pact signed with Iran to jointly investigate the 1994 AMIA attack, to work on an “alternative project, without mad proposals such an invasion of Iran,” during her State of the Nation speech on Saturday.
Kirchner told lawmakers during her speech that in December she and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman met in her office with leaders of the AMIA Jewish center and asked them to prepare an alternative proposal: “one that is different than the current Memorandum of Understanding, but within the margins of international law and due process that will allow the investigation to move forward.”
“As president, I pledge to terminate this agreement and carry out what they propose. Memory, truth and justice should not be just a slogan,” she said.
The meeting Kirchner referred to was with the leaders of the DAIA, the Jewish political umbrella organization that represents a network of national Jewish institutions. The meeting was held to discuss new ways to advance the investigation into the AMIA bombing case.
“We are working on other alternatives but first it is necessary to abolish the memorandum with Iran. We will launch a broad national campaign to negate the Memorandum of Understanding as the first step to advance in other ways,” Wald Wolff, DAIA vice president, told JTA.
The bilateral accord to jointly investigate the July 1994 AMIA bombing, which killed 85 and injured hundreds, came in January 2013. Argentina’s Jewish community, international Jewish groups, Israel and the United States have protested the agreement. Iran has been implicated in bombing, but no one has ever been brought to justice.
In November, 2013, Argentine Special Prosecutor Alberto Nisman asked a federal judge to declare unconstitutional his country’s memorandum with Iran.
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