Argentina's new President drops appeal court decision that voided pact with Iran to investigate AMIA bombing
The new Argentinian leader Mauricio Macri will not appeal a court decision last year that voided a pact with Iran to jointly investigate the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and wounded more than 300.
The pact, signed in 2013 by the previous government, led by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, was declared unconstitutional.
According to observers, the move by President Mauricio Macri’s new government is a signal that it wants to put an end to the matter.
“We are instructing our lawyers to cease the appeal,’’ said Justice Minister Gonzalo Garavano.
The pact signed by the Argentina’s Former Foreign Minister, Hector Timerman, and his Iranian counterpart, Ali Akbar Salehi, proposed the creation of a joint commission to help solve the 1994 bombing.
Argentine prosecutors have accused Iran of being behind the attac.
Alberto Nisman, the Argentine prosecutor who led the investigation, died of a gunshot wound to the head in mysterious circumstances. Nisman had claimed that the pact was part of an effort to disguise a secret deal arranged by Mrs. Kirchner in which Argentina would receive trade rewards from Iran in exchange for shielding Iranian officials from charges that they had orchestrated the bombing in 1994. Mr. Nisman’s accusations died in Argentina’s courts.
Nisman had spent more than a decade investigating the AMIA bombing, which was the deadliest terrorist attack to occur in the Western Hemisphere before the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
In 2007, the prosecutor demanded Interpol issue “red alerts” – international arrest notices – for eight former Iranian officials, accusing them of personally planning and executing the AMIA bombing. Interpol issued six red alerts for the high-ranking officials Imad Fayez Mughniyah, Ali Fallahijan, Mohsen Rabbani, Ahmad Reza Asghari, Ahmad Vahidi, and Mohsen Rezai. None were arrested, staying within the safety of Iranian borders.
The red alerts were only taken down after Fernández de Kirchner negotiated a “memorandum of understanding” with the government of Iran that would allow them authority within the AMIA investigation. The memorandum was widely unpopular in Argentina, believed to give Iran a free pass to investigate itself and find itself innocent.
Jewish leaders, some victims’ families and the political opposition to Kirchner criticized a provision of the pact that called for Argentine investigators to interrogate the Iranians in Tehran, saying it could pave the way for impunity for the suspects.
The pact was approved by Argentinian lawmakers, but it was declared unconstitutional by judges in a ruling last year because it was considered an overreach by the executive branch. Kirchner’s government had appealed the decision to a higher court.
by Maud Swinnen