"As we have stated before, Iran had no involvement in the incident in Argentina, and no evidence implicating Iran has been presented," said Hamid Reza Asefi, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson, on Iranian radio. Tehran recalled a top envoy from Argentina in protest.

The renewed accusations against Iran take place at a time when Washington has cranked up its anti-Iran campaign and continues to expand its military presence throughout South America under the banner of fighting "terrorism."

While lacking in evidence against Iran--the so-called "international connection"--the case has been marked by bribes, disappearing evidence and witnesses, and other cover-up efforts by Argentine government officials and police. The police involved, including the Buenos Aires provincial cops, federal police, and SIDE, the state intelligence agency, have been accused by some of the victims’ relatives of constituting the "local connection" in the bombing.

Several police officials have been arrested in connection with providing the Renault van used in the deadly bombing. But in nine years, not a single person has been arrested for the actual crime, despite the hundreds of cops assigned to the investigation and support from the U.S. and Israeli governments.

On July 18, 1994, a powerful blast demolished the seven-story building of the Jewish Mutual Aid Association of Argentina, known by its Spanish initials, AMIA.

Two years earlier, a car bombing of the Israeli embassy had left 29 people dead and 200 wounded.

U.S. and Israeli government officials, along with leaders of organizations claiming to speak for Argentina’s large Jewish community, have blamed the Iranian government and the Lebanese resistance organization Hezbollah for both bombings. Some evidence, however, points to involvement by police and military officials, including ultrarightist elements.

In August 1994, shortly after he was assigned to the case, Judge Galeano named as suspects three employees at the Iranian embassy and a former Iranian diplomat. Tehran sharply rejected the charges. Buenos Aires, encouraged by the U.S. government, was on the verge of breaking relations with Tehran until the Argentine Supreme Court voided the arrest orders against the four, citing insufficient evidence.  
 
Cops tied to case
After a flurry of initial arrests, one individual was found to have a direct link to the attack--Carlos Telleldín, a used car dealer who was accused of selling the van and refitting it for the bombing. Confessing to close ties to the Buenos Aires provincial police, he stated that in exchange for protection money the cops did not interfere with his dealings in stolen cars. Telleldín is the son of a retired police official who during the U.S.-backed military dictatorship ran a clandestine torture center.

In 1996, three senior police officials and a retired cop, who ran a protection racket for car thieves, were charged as accessories to the bombing. One of the four, Commissioner Juan José Ribelli, had received $2.5 million the week before the attack.

Evidence also emerged of police involvement in the 1992 Israeli embassy case. A police radio recording indicated that a patrol car covering the embassy grounds was ordered to report to the foreign ministry minutes before the bomb went off. All mention of the instructions to the cop to go to the ministry were omitted from the police records of those events.

Evidence was stolen from Galeano’s office, including a video of a meeting between the federal judge and Telleldín, which appears to show Galeano bribing Telleldín to implicate a group of provincial cops. Former interior minister Nilda Garré reported that 66 tapes of intercepted phone conversations disappeared from federal police and SIDE offices, and that police logbooks were altered. She accused state intelligence, the federal police, and other government agencies of a cover-up.

In December 1995, several army officials were arrested in connection with the AMIA case. One of these, Sgt. Jorge Pacífico, who had been placed near the scene of the bombing, is a leader of the fascist-minded, virulently anti-Semitic party MODIN, headed by former lieutenant colonel Aldo Rico and other right-wing army officers who spearheaded military revolts against the government in the 1980s. Large amounts of ammunition, weapons, and explosives were found in the homes of several of the officers, who were accused of stealing arms from the army and selling them to criminals. In 2001 a federal court convicted three of the officers on minor charges of illegal weapons possession.

In 1998 Argentine officials claimed proof of Tehran’s involvement in the AMIA case and expelled seven Iranian embassy officials after a defector from the Iranian government, a former Iranian intelligence official named Abdolghassem Mesbahi, asserted that Mohsen Rabbani, Iran’s cultural attaché in Argentina, had helped plan the bombing. He claimed Rabbani got help from Argentine cops and Iranian agents who had supposedly entered Argentina through the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este in the Triple Border area, where there is a large Lebanese immigrant community.

Mesbahi even claimed that two top Iranian leaders, then-president Hashemi Rafsanjani and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, personally ordered, organized, and financed the attack on the cultural center, and that they were behind the 1992 blast.

The recent indictments against four Iranian officials echo Mesbahi’s charges. The four are Rabbani; former minister of security and intelligence Ali Fallahian; Ali Balesh Abadi, a diplomatic courier; and former education minister Ali Akbar Parvaresh. In addition, Mesbahi accused former Argentine president Carlos Menem of taking a $10 million bribe from Iran to cover up the authors of the bombing.

To top off the swirl of charges and countercharges, some officials and big-business commentators assert that the culprit is the Syrian regime and Menem’s alleged financial connections to it. Telleldín claims that in 1995 Menem offered him $2 million if he blamed a group of Lebanese immigrants in Paraguay who were being detained in connection with the AMIA bombing. In Argentina there is a large Syrian-Lebanese community, including Menem’s family.  
 
U.S. military there to fight ‘terrorism’
The U.S. government has used the AMIA case as ammunition for its campaign to brand Tehran a "terrorist" government and a point on an "axis of evil." This propaganda campaign by Washington against Tehran has escalated with the unfolding U.S.-led assault on Iraq. Much of it has focused on the Triple Border area. Lurid stories have appeared in the big-business press portraying the area, centered in the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este, as a base for Hezbollah and Al Qaeda.

With Washington’s encouragement, the Paraguayan government has conducted an "antiterrorist" campaign directed at the Arab community in Ciudad del Este. For example, it has harassed Ahmed Barakat, a businessman and acknowledged Hezbollah supporter who raises funds for Islamic social organizations. The authorities accused Barakat of using the money to finance "terrorism" in the Mideast, but have been unable to prove any misuse of funds. After September 11, 2001, the government conducted police raids and arrested 21 Paraguayan Arabs, mostly on minor charges like expired visas.

Under the cover of this "antiterrorist" crusade, Washington has been expanding its military presence in the Triple Border area, including an unofficial military facility near the city of Concepción. In an interview in Ciudad del Este in July 2002, local unionists and peasant leaders told Militant reporters the real target is the growing social protests in Paraguay, northern Argentina, and Brazil in response to the economic disaster hitting workers and farmers throughout the region.

For several years, relatives of the victims of the AMIA bombing have been holding angry protests over the refusal by the Argentine authorities to conduct a serious investigation. Last July 18, on the eighth anniversary of the case, several thousand people rallied at the site of the Jewish center and condemned government officials for what one speaker called the "diversions, cover-ups, and lies."

A second protest rally, called by the Group to Present the Truth about the Unpunished Massacre at AMIA, heard speakers from the human rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and organizations of unemployed workers. The main slogan was, "The Argentine government is the local connection in the AMIA attack."  
 
 
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