The Argentine Jewish community commemorated the 19th anniversary of a deadly attack on the AMIA community centre in Buenos Aires Thursday, as representatives called for justice for the 85 fatalities in the as-yet unsolved terrorist attack.
The moving ceremony, which drew a crowd of thousands, opened with the sounds of sirens at 9.53am, the time of the 1992 attack, echoing the rituals observed in similar attacks in Israel, and was hosted by journalist Ari Paluch under the slogan 219 years: the wound is still open”.
Reiterating the message of this year’s memorial, which comes months after the Argentine government signed up to a controversial truth commission with its Iranian counterparts designed to unearth the protagonists of the attack, widely believed to be the Islamist regime itself, AMIA President Leonardo Jmlenitzky addressed participants as he said: “19 years ago our fathers and sons were murdered. It’s a wound that cannot heal without truth and justice.”
Slamming the so-called truth initiative in front of a crowd of survivors, politicians and community members, he questioned “what confidence can we have in Iran when the same government has denied the genocide of six million Jews in the Holocaust?”.
Journalist Andy Kusnetzoff read a personal account of the loss of a friend who died in the attack which also injured hundreds, before singer Patricia Sosa performed the song “Goodbye”. Perhaps the most moving part of Thursday ceremony came with its closing moments, which saw Sonia Guterman give a heartfelt address on behalf of the Victims’ Families Association.
Guterman, who lost her daughter Andrea in the bombing, accused the Argentine government of subjecting the survivors to endless cycles of hope and dismay, of "demands for justice, impunity, memory, impunity, grief, impunity. The impunity has reigned, fed by the guilty, the accomplices and those who covered up the truth. It's difficult to understand," she said.
President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a staunch proponent of the truth commission with Iran, was represented by Senator Anibal Fernández in her absence.
Other commemoration included a series of artworks which were exhibited at the AMIA art space in the Argentine capital to mark the annual memorial to the terror attack. A specially commissioned art installation entitled "Memory cart", by Jorge Caterbetti, was also exhibited, consisting of wheels to denote the myriad judicial processes that have built up over the past 19 years to bring the attacks’ perpetrators to justice.
There was also a commemoration organised by the city’s youth group leaders on Wednesday evening, featuring collated readings and personal testimonies of the victims of the large-scale bombing.
The Israeli foreign ministry issued a statement stating it “shares the deep grief of the Jewish community of Argentina as well as its outrage that justice has not been done”. In a message that expressed Israel’s anger that those “who conceived, planned and carried out this heinous crime continue to walk among us, free to plan and execute additional acts of terror around the globe”, the Jewish State simultaneously spoke of its “solidarity with the bereaved families, the Jewish community in Argentina and the entire Argentine people”.
“In the face of the forces of evil that seek to harm us, our unity is our strength,” concluded the official comment.
The Argentine Attorney General’s Office first implicated Iran responsible for the 1994 AMIA attacks in November 2006, with an Argentine judge then issuing arrest warrants for seven senior Iranians and one senior Hezbollah member. A 500 page report by lead AMIA prosecutor Alberto Nisman was released in May confirming his earlier findings of 2006, that senior Iranians had commissioned the attack.
Nisman maintains that Iran infiltrated several South American countries through the installation of intelligence centres. Iran has rejected his claims as Zionist conspiracy theory and denied culpability in the attack. The Iranian government in May officially agreed to establish a “truth commission” with Argentina to jointly investigate the 1994 attack, supposedly enabling Argentine prosecutors to travel to Teheran and question high-ranking Iranian officials suspected of organising the bombing.