A terrible explosion in the center of the city of Buenos Aires. In seconds, the headquarters of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) had become a pile of dust and rubble that concealed 85 dead and more than 300 wounded. It was July 18, 1994, and what followed were three decades of impunity for those responsible for the terrorist attack. Who were they? Why did they do it? No one knows. Investigators followed false leads and ignored other possible ones. Local and international political powers sought to profit from it. The judge, prosecutors and agents who were supposed to unravel the truth ended up convicted for covering it up. And the legal case for the attack—which targets Iran and Hezbollah—is still pending, an open question mark that does not allow the wounds to heal. This Thursday, on the anniversary of the massacre, relatives and friends of the victims, along with representatives of the Jewish community, officials and leaders from different political and social sectors, will once again demonstrate to demand justice.
“It was the State’s own actions that prevented the victims and their families from knowing the truth of the events,” ruled the Inter-American Court of Human Rights just a few weeks ago, condemning the Argentine State for failing to investigate or prevent the attack on the AMIA. The warnings had not been lacking: two years earlier, on March 17, 1992, a similar attack, also involving a car bomb, had killed 22 people and injured more than 200 in the explosion of the Israeli Embassy.
The diversion of the investigation
During the initial investigation into the AMIA attack, led by then-Judge Juan José Galeano, “the State used its own capacity and institutionality to divert the investigation through a series of irregularities” and “the deliberate abandonment of some lines of investigation,” in particular the so-called Syrian lead, the international court concluded. From the very beginning, the crime scene was not protected, evidence was not collected or adequately guarded, and operations were carried out outside the court file. As part of these maneuvers, and to falsely implicate a group of police officers in the case, judicial officials bribed car dealer Carlos Telleldín—who had sold the Renault Trafic van that was allegedly used as a car bomb—with funds from the Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE).
The first trial on the attack was held around those alleged to have been involved in the local connection. It ended with all of them acquitted and the web of irregularities that had been behind it came to light. From there, another case was initiated, centered on the cover-up and failure to fulfill their duties as officials of Judge Galeano, the prosecutors of the case, authorities of the SIDE, police, representatives of the Jewish community and even former President Carlos Menem, now deceased. The magistrates and intelligence officials, among others, were convicted. But the ruling was appealed and is still not final.
Verdict and death
After the resounding failure of the first trial, the government – then headed by Néstor Kirchner – created a special unit in 2004 to investigate the terrorist attack and appointed prosecutor Alberto Nisman as its head. His verdict, released in 2006 and based on Argentine, Israeli and American intelligence reports, considered that the attack was carried out by the Lebanese organization Hezbollah, at the behest of the highest authorities of the Republic of Iran, in retaliation for the suspension of virtual commitments to provide nuclear technology to that country. Nisman requested the arrest of eight former Iranian officials, including former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who died in 2017.
Iran rejected the accusations. The arrests and extraditions never materialized and the trial could not move forward. With the stated objective of overcoming this obstacle and being able to investigate the accused in their country, in 2013 the Government of Cristina Kirchner signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran. That agreement, which was never implemented, unleashed a new controversy and another judicial file that still persists. The prosecutor Nisman denounced that it was a plan to cover up for the Iranians and accused the then president and other officials of treason. In January 2015, hours before presenting his complaint to Congress, Nisman was found dead in his apartment, the victim of an apparent suicide. After two contradictory expert reports, the judicial case is investigating the case as a homicide and, almost 10 years after the event, it remains open and without results. Like the case for the attack on the AMIA.
The judicial steps
Now headed by prosecutor Sebastián Basso, the AMIA Prosecution Unit supports the hypothesis of Hezbollah and Iran’s responsibility. While the arrest warrants for Iranian citizens are still in force, Basso requested the international arrest of four Lebanese who 30 years ago were in Ciudad del Este —a key point on the triple border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay—, where they would have been part of a Hezbollah cell and would have been accomplices of Salman El Reda or Salman Raouf Salman, accused of being the possible coordinator of the attack. While demanding access to the classified files of the SIDE, the prosecution is seeking to advance where possible. The next step is for one of those Lebanese, Faruk Omairi, to be tried next year in Brazil, a country of which he is also a citizen.
In this context of the case, and in line with the 30th anniversary of the attack, the Government of Javier Milei presented a project to Congress to enable trials in absentia of those accused of crimes against humanity or terrorism. “The current regulation of the criminal process does not allow reaching a definitive decision if the accused is absent. This is particularly problematic in cases of serious violations of human rights in which society has a legitimate and inalienable interest in knowing the truth,” say the grounds of the project.
Milei will participate in the official ceremony commemorating the victims of the attack, this Thursday at 9:30. The presidents of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, and Paraguay, Santiago Peña, will also be there. Speakers are expected to be the head of AMIA, Amos Linetzky, and relatives of victims. “We do not even have the consolation of justice, there is not even one person answering for these crimes against humanity,” Linetzky lamented on Tuesday.
The claim of the relatives
Outside of the official activity, various organizations of victims’ families will also demonstrate. The members of Memoria Activa will do so in front of the Palace of Courts, in the center of Buenos Aires, also on Thursday at 9:30. “Thirty years have passed and we have not achieved any truth about the attack, it is very painful and frustrating. What we have is absolute impunity,” says Diana Wassner, a member of that organization. “Personally, I no longer have any hope. Everything has been so manipulated by all the governments that it is absurd to think that we will see those responsible punished,” adds Wassner, whose husband, the architect Andrés Malamud, 37 years old, was one of the victims of the terrorist attack. She also does not believe that a trial in absentia can contribute anything: “The problem is not the judicial instruments, but the investigation that was not done from the first moment. The evidence that exists is intelligence reports, they are of no judicial use.”
![Patricia Strier poses with a photograph of her sister Mirta, a victim of the attack, at her home in Buenos Aires.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/IR26YBWCOJDOXBVHZQD4QFOS5I.jpg?auth=32bc8e65a0fd682b2fcd08eca4b74da69cd903c09b17341d3445f19d1595ede5&width=414)
Another organization, the Association for the Clarification of the Unpunished AMIA Massacre (Apemia), is calling for a meeting on Thursday at six in the afternoon entitled Open the State Archives to End the Pact of Impunity. One of the demands of this organization is precisely “the unrestricted opening of the intelligence archives” and the creation of an independent investigative commission to analyze them. “All governments during these years did everything to deny us the truth,” says Laura Ginsberg, a member of Apemia. “An official story was constructed based on foreign intelligence services that cannot be proven with evidence. Our hypothesis is that the responsibility lies with the Argentine State and that the AMIA crime was the result of a large intelligence operation,” adds Ginsberg. One of the 85 fatal victims of the attack was her companion, José Enrique Ginsberg. He was 43 years old.
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