Argentinean prosecutor: Bombing probes continue

Argentinian legal authority denies report that investigation into 1990s attacks on Jewish targets in Buenos Aires stopped at urging of Iran.

By GIL STERN STERN SHEFLER
Argentina bombing of Israeli embassy 311 (R) (photo credit: Reuters)
Argentina bombing of Israeli embassy 311 (R)
(photo credit: Reuters)
Contrary to a recent report, the investigations into the 1992 and 1994 bombings of the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires have not been stopped, a lawyer charged with handling the court case on behalf of the government said Sunday.
Prosecutor Alberto Nisman denied a report that appeared in a local newspaper last week alleging that Argentina had been offered, and perhaps accepted, a deal to “forget” the attacks that killed 116 people and wounded hundreds.
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“It is absolutely preposterous, absurd,” Nisman told the Prensa Judia, a local Jewish newspaper. “It’s been a long time since I’ve read such nonsense.”
The article run by the Prefil tabloid alleged that Tehran had offered Argentina improved financial ties if it dropped the investigations into the bombings, which are believed to have been carried out by Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and which might directly implicate senior Iranian diplomats.
According to the article, Iran had passed the offer to Argentinean Foreign Minister Hector Timmerman when he met in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar Assad, an ally of the Islamic Republic.
Nisman said that efforts to complete the investigations had continued without hindrance.
“I’m convinced that the Argentine government thinks nothing of [the report],” he said. “It is absolutely false...It’s crazy, it does not have any logic.”
Nisman said the investigation, which is currently in its 17th year, was progressing and that several breakthroughs were expected this year.
“We are moving steadily and incorporating new evidence that further compromises former officials of the Iranian regime, a regime that continues to protect and shelter those accused of terrorist action,” he said.
“We are finding many links between the perpetrators of this and those who have just been convicted by a jury for trying to bomb Kennedy Airport in New York in 2007...
and this has opened a new [source of information for] evidence [for] the file,” he added. “I am convinced that this year we will record significant progress.”