Letters to US, EU demand answers on status of alleged AMIA conspirator Vahidi
President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s administration has warned Washington and the European Union against removing an Iranian official implicated in the 1994 attack on the AMIA Jewish community centre from their sanctions list, as part of the nuclear accord struck between Western powers and Tehran earlier this month.
In a letter to US Secretary of State John Kerry and EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman requested clarification on whether former Iranian defence minister Ahmad Vahidi was among those who were to be delisted. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on July 27 the sanctions would be lifted.
Fernández de Kirchner took to Twitter to publicize the letters and also blast her critics.
“This is how nations and interests work. This is what some in our country seem to ignore or refuse to admit. Or even worse, they are fully aware of it and keep mum. They are aware but they lie. The interests of Argentina? Fine, thanks,” the president wrote on her Twitter account, criticizing opposition media and the local leaders of the Jewish community organizations who pointed fingers at the Kirchnerite administration for allegedly seeking to lift the Interpol Red Notices with the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Iran.
Timerman and former Interpol head Ronald Noble dismissed those allegations in January.
In the letters, Timerman requested information on whether the nuclear agreement included conditions on the AMIA suspects.
“I would be grateful if you could advise us whether, as a result of the agreed conditions, scope and effects of the commitment assumed by the EU or by any other signatory to the deal, individuals or actions linked to the AMIA attack would be included,” Timerman wrote.
For its part, the AMIA Jewish community organization backed the request made by the Kirchnerite administration.
The request
Timerman — who recently underwent surgery to remove a tumour — reminded Kerry and Mogherini that Argentina had requested the AMIA case be part of the negotiations between world powers and Iran.
“The firm commitment of my government for justice, to the fight against terrorism in all of its forms and full respect for human rights, has led us to explore all possible avenues for the Argentine Judiciary to be able to fully clarify the attack and for those responsible to be tried in my country,” Timerman wrote.
“It was in that context that the Argentine government duly maintained communications and held bilateral meetings with you and with other officials of your administration,” the Argentine foreign minister said in his letter to Kerry. “The main reason for this was to request that the question of the AMIA attack be included in the negotiations for the nuclear deal with Iran,” he added.
“At a first glance, these two things, i.e. the negotiations for a nuclear deal and the AMIA attack, could have been regarded as unrelated,” Timerman also said. “The request made by my government was, and of course continues to be, fully justified.”
The agreement
The deal signed on July 14 between world powers and Iran in Vienna was the culmination of 20 months of arduous diplomacy. As a result of the agreement signed by the US, EU members and Iran, Western sanctions will be lifted in return for Tehran agreeing to long-term curbs on a nuclear programme that the West has suspected was aimed at creating a nuclear bomb — a claim Iranian authorities have repeatedly denied.
CFK celebrated the agreement shortly after it was sealed.
“We are convinced that dialogue and peaceful resolution of international controversies are the only way to have a fair world,” CFK said yesterday after expressing her concern that the deal could end up affecting the AMIA case.
The suspect
According to the Wall Street Journal piece written by Jay Solomon, Vahidi is among a group of Iranian military officers, nuclear scientists and defence institutions set to be removed from sanctions list as a result of the nuclear accord signed in Vienna.
When a bomb killed 85 people in AMIA in 1994, Vahidi was then a commander of the Iran’s elite overseas military unit, the al-Quds Force, which is a unit of the Revolutionary Guard.
Vahidi went on to become the deputy minister of defence in 2005 and was appointed minister four years later. He was in the post until August 2013.
In 2006, Federal Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral requested the arrest of Vahidi and other Iranian officials as suspects of the boming.
In 2013, Timerman signed the MOU with Iran to unlock the investigation into the AMIA case. The agreement included the authorization of the Argentine judge and prosecutor to travel to Tehran to question five suspects and the creation of a truth commission made up of international experts to help with the investigation of the case.
Legal stalemate
Former AMIA special prosecutor Alberto Nisman accused CFK of using the 2013 Memorandum as a Trojan horse to shield the alleged Iranian masterminds of the 1994 bombing. Nisman was found dead four days after filing that criminal complaint, which has since been dismissed by several courts.
The constitutionality of the Memorandum is still being examined by the Comodoro Py courthouse after it was declared unconstitutional by the Federal Criminal Appeals Court in May last year in tune with the requests of the AMIA and DAIA Jewish community organizations. The Justice Ministry appealed that decision, bringing the case before the Federal Cassation Court, the country’s highest criminal tribunal.
The Cassation Court was scheduled to rule on the constitutionality of the agreement on June 30 but it has been deadlocked after substitute judge Luis María Cabral was removed by the Magistrates Council on June 25. Cabral and opposition leaders accused the Kirchnerite administration of separating Cabral to prevent him from voting along with his colleague Juan Carlos Gemignani against the interests of the Pink House.
Kirchnerite sources have also suggested that the MOU was the main reason for the government’s dispute with sectors of the secret services that opposed the agreement, believing that the Pink House was closing ranks with Iran.
Herald staff
Source: Buenos Aires Herald