Argentina-Iran cooperation to continue despite indictment

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — Argentina will continue to work with Iran to investigate a terror attack despite an indictment that accuses Tehran of terrorist activity in South America, the foreign ministry in Buenos Aires said.

“We will continue to promote the legal way to find and prosecute those responsible for Argentina’s worst ever terrorist attack,” read a foreign ministry statement released over the weekend, referring to the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people died.

Late last month, the Iranian government officially agreed to establish a “truth commission” with Argentina to jointly investigate the attack. Argentina’s Congress ratified the collaboration in February, despite protests by Jewish leaders who said that the cooperation was a miscarriage of justice in light of court rulings in Argentina which said Iranian officials were tied to the attack.

The Argentinian prosecutor in the AMIA case, Alberto Nisman, accused Iran in a 502-page indictment filed May 29 of building clandestine intelligence stations in South American countries from which to launch terror attacks.

The indictment said the intelligence stations were established to sponsor, foster and execute terrorist attacks in order to export the Islamic revolution. Identical intelligence bases and centers were discovered in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname.

Julio Schlosser, president of Jewish political umbrella DAIA, said the indictment “confirms and backs up our solid decision of opposing the memorandum of understanding signed with a regime that promotes terrorism and also protects those responsible of the massacre perpetrated in Argentina.”