ARGENTINA: PROSECUTORS SEEK ARREST WARRANT OF IRANIAN EX-PRESIDENT HASHEMI RAFSANJANI IN JEWISH-CENTER BOMBING.
Argentine prosecutors have called for a federal judge to order the arrest of Iran's former President Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-1997) and seven other Iranian or Lebanese individuals for the 1994 bombing of the Jewish center Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA). They allege that the planning of the attack, the deadliest single bombing incident in Argentine history, occurred at the highest levels of Iran's government. This comes after a judge approved investigating an investigation into another federal judge and eight others who failed to win convictions for accused accomplices in the crime.
Judge's ruling on warrant request pending indefinitely
Prosecutor Alberto Nisman charged that six other Iranians and a Lebanese were involved, including a top Hezbollah figure, Imad Fayez Mugniyah. Nisman said the accused met on Aug. 13, 1993, in Mashad, Iran, to approve the attack. He charged that the plot involved not only top political officials, but also lower-level diplomats in the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires.
"It wasn't a decision taken around a coffee table from one day to the next by five or six gentlemen," said Nisman. He called it a well-calculated plan that was part of a "terrorist matrix" that included assassinations in France, Germany, and Switzerland.
Nisman is the first Argentine official to publicly accuse officials in Tehran of involvement in the attack, and his charges lend credence to longstanding American and Israeli claims that Iran and Hezbollah are sponsors of international terrorism.
But the charges are not likely to bring arrests anytime soon. Federal Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral must approve Nisman's findings and issue arrest warrants. Then Argentina would have to seek the suspects' extradition--a request Iran is unlikely to honor. Warrants could, however, prevent the suspects from traveling freely outside Iran; they would be subject to arrest under international agreements.
Prosecutors also asked the judge to detain several other former Iranian officials, including a former intelligence chief, Ali Fallahijan, and former foreign minister Ali Ar Velayati. They also urged the arrest of two former commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, two former Iranian diplomats, and a former Hezbollah security chief for external affairs.
Nisman and fellow prosecutor Marcelo Martinez Burgos said they suspected that Hezbollah undertook activities outside Lebanon only "under orders emanating directly from the regime in Tehran."
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