AFP, Buenos Aires, 19 Sept 2011 – Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner will call on Iran in a UN speech to turn over eight Iranian officials implicated in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people, her office said Monday.
The Iranian officials whose extradition is sought by Argentina for the crime include the country’s current Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi, former prime minister Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati.
In a speech Wednesday to the UN General Assembly, Kirchner expects ‘to maintain the stance taken by Argentina in demanding that the eight officials accused as intellectual authors of the attack appear before Argentine justice,’ her office said on its website.
Kirchner leaves Monday for New York, along with a delegation of leaders of Argentina’s 300,000-strong Jewish community, the largest in Latin America.
On July 18, 1994, a van loaded with explosives detonated outside the Israeli-Argentine Mutual Aid Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people and injuring more than 300 in the country’s worst terrorist attack.
Two years earlier, 29 people were killed in the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, an attack that has never been solved.
The initial investigation into the AMIA bombing was thrown out by the Argentine courts after an investigating magistrate was found to have tried to bribe a witness.
But in October 2006, a second investigation resulted in indictments of the Iranian officials, with Argentine prosecutors alleging that the attack was planned and financed in Tehran and carried out by a Hezbollah cell.
In July, the Iranian foreign ministry denied the eight officials were involved but said it was prepared to hold a ‘constructive dialogue’ and ‘cooperate with the Argentine government to shed all light’ on the attack.
The Argentine government said at the time that it would study the offer, but has so far made no official reply.
‘It’s impossible for there to be a dialogue while there is judicial impunity,’ said Aldo Donzis, the president of a group that represents Jewish associations.
‘The only thing we can accept is that (the accused) be brought to justice,’ he added.
Sergio Burstein, a member of a group of families of the victims of the attack, said Kirchner would take the same line in her UN speech as she has in the past.
‘But what is more important is that it will assure us of her commitment in the face of this new requirement by Iran,’ he said.