Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner launched a blistering attack on the director of a Buenos Aires Jewish community, after AMIA President Guillermo Borger questioned the decision by her government to launch a “truth commission” into the unsolved 1994 bomb attack against the Jewish center in conjunction with suspected perpetrators Iran.
In a statement to media Friday, Borger insisted the only impact of the Senate-approved agreement with the Islamist regime would be “to open the door to a third attack, it would be total submission”. Responding to Borger’s offensive on her official Twitter attack, Kirchner rejected his “terrible statement” whilst seeming to imply complicity with a third party in the orchestration of any such future terrorist attack.
“If a terrorist attack did occur because of Argentina’s agreement with Iran, who would be the intellectual and physical mastermind,” she questioned, adding that:“It’s clear that it could never be the signatory countries. Could it be those who have rejected the agreement? Countries, people, or intelligence services? Who?”
The bombing of the AMIA building killed 85 and wounded hundreds.
The Argentinian government’s decision to collaborate with the international sanctioned Iranian regime runs in contrast to international efforts to isolate it on account of its disputed nuclear development programme and has drawn widespread criticism, notably from close allies and Iran critics the US and Israel.
According to an Israeli foreign ministry statement, Argentina’s Ambassador to Israel was called to meet with the ministry’s director of Latin American affairs Yitzchak Shoham in the immediate aftermath of the January 27 “historic” decision announced by Kirchner.
The official comment revealed Shoham expressed his country’s “astonishment and disappointment” at the unprecedented move to collaborate with Iran, describing it as “particular disappointing given the intimate relationship to which Israel is accustomed with Argentina, a very friendly country”.
Last week the AMIA Jewish community centre of Buenos Aires released an official statement on its website demanding “absolute responsibility from relevant parties involved in making important decisions in the pursuit of justice”. Responding the “unexpected” revelation by the Argentine government, it added that it had a “duty to warn about the risks of establishing agreements with Iranian authorities, who to date have never shown any intention to collaborate on research, and they have also repeatedly denied involvement in the attack, ignoring Argentina’s demands for justice and repeated requests for information from the judge and the prosecutor of the case”.
Objecting to not having been consulted as to the contents of the draft memorandum, the official comment further called into question “the legality of all acts connected with his case” warning that any irregularities could “lead to the invalidity of court case proceedings, and indefinitely postpone Argentina’s case against suspected Iranian officials and international arrest warrants”.