BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — An Iranian suspect in the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires AMIA Jewish Center denied his country was involved in the attack and said that the late prosecutor Alberto Nisman was murdered.
“Who killed Nisman? Why don’t they let people in Argentina know the truth?” Moshen Rabbani said in a radio interview from Tehran.
Rabbani was Iran’s cultural attache in Argentina at the time of the attack. He is a suspect in the bombing, according to Argentina’s Justice Department.
Rabbani’s declaration on Friday to Argentine Radio 10 comes at a time of heightened tension between Iran and the United States following the U.S. drone attack that killed General Qassem Soleimani.
Rabbani suggested that Nisman was murdered because he didn’t have evidence to support his accusation that Iran was involved in the bombing. He added that Nisman might have been pressured by others to kill himself for the same reason.
Rabbani also defended Soleimani as “a military genius in the region that could stop Israel and could stop ISIS, he helped Lebanon to confront Israel.”
The president of the DAIA Jewish umbrella group told local media that Rabbani should talk to Argentina’s judiciary instead of the media.
Based on Nisman’s investigation, six Iranians have been on Interpol’s most wanted list since 2007, including Rabbani, who Nisman said is a leading figure in spreading radical Islam in Latin America.
Nisman, who alleged that Argentina’s president and other government ministers covered up Iran’s role in the bombing, was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment in 2015, hours before he was to present his allegations to Congress.
His death was ruled a likely suicide, but an Argentine federal appeals court later called it murder.