The investigation into the 1992 terrorist attack against the Israeli Embassy is not a closed case, the Supreme Court acknowledged yesterday as the country’s highest court appeared to backtrack over Chief Justice Ricardo Lorenzetti’s words on Tuesday.
During the ceremony to inaugurate the judicial year, Lorenzetti said the probe into the Embassy bombing has been closed since 1999, which prompted to harsh criticism from the Pink House.
In the brief issued yesterday, Court Secretary Esteban Carnevari explained Lorenzetti made reference to the way in which the Court was able to prove how the attack was carried out and suspects identified.
“The chief justice noted that the evidence has been accepted by the parties and that on that basis, the investigation continues and there is now a need for foreign cooperation,” the brief said.
On Tuesday, before a courtroom packed with judges, Lorenzetti had said there was nothing left to do.
Lorenzetti had responded on Tuesday to President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s address to Congress when she accused Israel of not backing the investigation into the Embassy case and asked: “Can anyone tell this president if someone has been indicted or convicted?”
The president directly targeted the head of the country’s highest court, who was also accused of hampering the judicial investigation into the cover-up of the attack against the AMIA Jewish community centre.
His words were not only contradicted by Kirchnerite officials and some prosecutors aligned with the pro-judicial reform organization Legitimate Justice but also by plaintiffs and former justice Augusto Belluscio, who said the Embassy case was not closed in 1999, as Lorenzetti had claimed when he tried to distance himself and his colleagues from the decision made by a previous tribunal.
“We did not reach a conclusion. I think we had agreed to continue with the investigation,” Belluscio said yesterday in conversation with Radio Vorterix.
“First, the Israeli Embassy hampered the investigation and then the probe did not make much progress,” the former justice who retired in 2003 added, backing what Fernández de Kirchner affirmed on Sunday.
The case, according to the Court
On December 23, 1999, the country’s highest tribunal issued a resolution reporting that the Embassy located on 916 Arroyo was blown up by explosives contained in a Ford F-100 van parked on the street on March 17, 1992 at 2.47pm.
On Sunday, the president made reference to the 29 fatal victims of the attack but there has also been controversy on the number of casualties as the Court then determined that 22 people were killed that day.
A source told the Herald that evidence indicated the bomb was placed within the embassy but that the explanation to which Embassy officials agreed to noted the bomb was placed outside Israel’s diplomatic mission in Buenos Aires City.
According to the country’s highest court, which at the time was made up of different members, the attack was led by the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, though on Thursday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran of bombing the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA Jewish Community Centre in Buenos Aires City when he addressed a joint session of the US Congress to criticize Washington’s negotiations with Tehran.
Suspects
The Court first called for the arrest of Imad Mughniyah, who was Hezbollah’s security chief when the attack was carried out. According to a recent Washington Post investigation, the CIA and the Mossad killed Mughniyah in 2008 in Syria.
The country’s highest tribunal — then made up of nine justices — investigated Samuel Salman El Reda, whose brother was arrested in 1992 in the city of Rosario with fake dollars. In 2006, the Court requested the arrest Mughniyah and El Reda.
The Intelligence Secretariat (SI, formerly known as SIDE) then reported that Hussein Mohamad Ibrahim Suleiman was arrested in Jordan in 2001, who said that he took explosives from Brazil to Argentina in 1992, which were reportedly used to blow up the embassy.
The Court also investigated the Iranian link to the attack. In fact, justices pointed fingers at Jaffar Saadat Ahmad Nia, an Iranian diplomat who stayed in the country between 1991 and 1993. The Iranian diplomat, according to intelligence information, entered the country a day before the attack and left a day later. “But that information could not be confirmed,” the country’s highest tribunal acknowledged yesterday.
Controversy
On Tuesday, the Israeli Embassy reiterated that it is the responsibility of the Argentine state to investigate the 1992 attack on its diplomatic headquarters in Buenos Aires after the president pointed fingers at that country’s alleged lack of interest to take perpetrators to court.
The diplomatic press release came after Lorenzetti said there was a closed investigation and Fernández de Kirchner’s Cabinet Chief Aníbal Fernández said “Lorenzetti was not well informed.”
Judicial sources explained that if evidence emerges, the Court will have to change its conclusions without taking anyone to court as no one could be arrested and interrogated.
Herald with online media