March 13, 2013

WASHINGTON (JTA) – Two senators asked the president of Argentina to end his country’s agreement with Iran to establish a truth commission into the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) sent a letter on March 11 to Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, which expressed their “grave concern” over the commission that Argentina and Iran jointly established to reinvestigate the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994, in which 85 people were killed and 300 injured.

The senators fear that the newly created truth commission will downgrade the incident, which will “lead to the dismissal of charges and the whitewashing of this heinous crime,” they wrote in their letter.

“The truth in this matter has already been meticulously established in Argentine courts,” according to Kirk and Gillibrand.

In 2006, an Argentinian court indicted eight senior Iranian officials with ties to Hezbollah in the matter. Six Iranians have been on the Interpol international police agency’s most wanted list since 2007 in connection with the bombing, including the current Iranian defense minister, Gen. Ahmed Vahidi.
 
 

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