Iran and Hezbollah responsible for AMIA and Israel embassy bombings, Argentina says

Iran and Hezbollah committed crimes against humanity and are responsible for the 1994 Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) and the 1992 Israeli embassy bombings, the Federal Court of Criminal Cassation said in a ruling on an appeal over a 2019 decision regarding cases of corruption and cover-ups by law enforcement and intelligence officials.

The court said on Thursday that the AMIA bombing “was organized, planned, financed, and executed under the direction of the authorities of the Islamic State of Iran within the framework of Islamic jihad and with the main intervention of the political and military organization – Hezbollah.”

Further, high-ranking Iranian officials and members of the diplomatic mission to Argentina were involved in the ordering of both attacks, which, according to the court, is a felony that falls under the Rome Statute category of a crime against humanity for its nature – widespread or systematic attacks against civilian populations.

The court reminded that former Iranian intelligence minister Ali Fallahian, former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Mohsen Rezaee, former IRGC Quds Force commander Ahmad Vadidi, former cultural affairs officer at the Iranian embassy in Argentina Moshen Rabbani, former diplomatic secretary Ahnmad Reza Ashgari, and alleged Hezbollah operatives Hussein Mounir Mouzannar, Salman Raouf Salman, and Farouk Abdul Hay Omairi have standing Interpol arrest warrants for suspected involvement in the bombing.

The court said that former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati and former Iranian ambassador Hadi Soleimpenpour were also suspected of involvement but had immunity from the issuance of Interpol warrants because they still hold public office and that the additional suspects in the case – former Hezbollah foreign intelligence chief Imad Fayez Moughnieh, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi, and alleged Hezbollah operative Alí Hussein Abdallah – were dead.

The ultimate betrayal

In its decision, the court said that Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, were motivated by notions of Islamic jihad against the West and its democratic values, and suggested possible political motivations that stood behind the will to punish Argentina specifically for not trading agreed-upon materials and technology that could have been used in Iran’s nuclear program.

Since the actions were deemed as crimes against humanity, double jeopardy was not applicable in the petition filed by friends and families of the victims of the attacks, AMIA, the Justice Ministry, and police officers who were wrongly detained and falsely implicated by the officials actually involved in the cover-up.

Also, former AMIA investigator judge Juan Jose Galeano, state secretary of intelligence director (SIDE) Hugo Alfredo Anzorreguy, SIDE deputy director Juan Carlos Anchezar, and Department for the Protection of Constitutional Order (DPOC) Police chief Carlos Antonio Castaneda were all found guilty of tamping with evidence and covering up who the true culprits of the crime were.

Galeano was given four years in prison, Anzorreguy 4 years and 6 months, and Anchezar and Castaneda three years.Historian Yoel Schvartz told The Jerusalem Post that Galeano had previously been convicted in 2019 and was given a six-year suspended prison sentence. While his sentence was reduced by four years since, the new conviction would now result in actual jail time.

Anchezar had embezzled $400,000 and worked with Galeano to bribe former policeman-turned-car-dealer Carlos Alberto Telleldin to implicate Buenos Aires police officers as the ones who purchased the vehicle used in the AMIA bombing. Subsequently, Telleldin was sentenced to three years and 6 months in prison, and was ordered to pay $400,000 in restitution.

President Javier Milei’s office celebrated the ruling Thursday, saying that it put an end to decades of delays and cover-ups to conceal that Hezbollah conducted the deadly terrorist attacks under the auspices of Iran.

“The era of impunity [has] ended in the Argentine Republic,” Milei’s office announced, emphasizing that the decision was made without political pressure.

The courts delivered “the justice that both victims and their families have waited for decades,” it stressed.

Roxana Levinson, who lost her aunt Graciela Levinson in the 1992 embassy bombing and her uncle Jaime Plaksin in the 1994 AMIA bombing, said that while it was positive that the Argentinian justice system had finally woken up and affirmed what had been known for so long, the whole truth had not yet come out. So much of the evidence had been lost and destroyed, and “many of the people who fought for so long for the truth and justice are no longer alive,” she explained.

“It hurts, but at the same time there is hope to see that the issue of the terrorist attacks has not been forgotten and that there are still those who continue to seek justice for the victims,” said Levinson. “These victims paid with their lives the price of the world’s indifference and inaction towards Iran and its acts of terrorism. Argentina had to learn the lesson for the highest price, with the blood of our loved ones. I hope the world wakes up and understands before the bloodshed continues and it’s too late.”

Milei’s office said former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had betrayed the nation with the signing of a 2013 Memorandum of Understanding between the Argentinian and Iranian governments, as the ruling highlighted that this was part of the cover-up attempts and a “pact that promoted and guaranteed terrorist impunity.”

The MoU established a commission that involved Iranian investigators in a joint investigation with Argentina.Notably for instance, just days after he filed a 300-page document accusing Kirchner of covering up Iran’s role in the AMIA bombing, Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found dead with a single bullet to the head in 2015.

Schvartz said that over the course of 30 years of investigation by various parties, testimonies, recordings, and other pieces of evidence had disappeared, leaving the investigation not much further along than when it had begun.

There were several investigation theories about who had been responsible, the Iranian angle being one of them. A Syrian connection was also theorized by some, who speculated that this was linked to former president Carlos Menem. Menem was acquitted in the Thursday ruling.

Future Argentinian ambassador to Israel, rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish, told the Post in early March that, as part of his campaign promises, Milei promised the Argentinian Jewish community that he was doing all that he could to bring the perpetrators of the bombing to justice.

In 1992, a suicide bomber rammed a truck into the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, murdering 29 people and wounding 242 more. Four Israelis were among the victims, according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

In 1994, 85 people were killed and hundreds injured in the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.