Israelis in Argentina search for bombers
Evan Dyer in Buenos Aires (Wednesday July 20, 1994)
The toll of dead and injured continued to rise yesterday as rescue workers
struggled to find survivors amid the ruins of the Israeli Mutual Association
offices in Buenos Aires, destroyed by a huge explosion on Monday morning.
Twenty-seven bodies and four bags of human remains gave an indication of the
scale of the carnage, while fire brigade officials said that 70 people
believed to have been at the scene remained unaccounted for. They were
believed to be buried under the mountain of rubble that was the seven-storey
building.
The building housed a Jewish community centre in the heart of Buenos Aires'
traditional Jewish neighbourhood. Argentina has a Jewish population of about
300,000, the biggest in Latin America.
One hundred and forty-six people have been admitted to city hospitals, while
hundreds more were made homeless by the blast that devastated several large
blocks of flats.
Intelligence experts from Israel, Spain and other countries arrived yesterday
to help in the hunt for the bombers. All Argentine borders remained closed
yesterday as police began to sift through the immense volume of material
from the bomb site. Bomb squad officials said they believed that a bomb in
the basement of the building, rather than a car bomb, had caused the
explosion. They suspect building work may have enabled the bombers to bring
in the device.
President Menem said the blast was carried out by non-Argentine organisations,
but added it was possible that there had been some Argentine involvement. He
said a 33-year-old Moroccan was held near the scene, but gave no more
details. One other person, an Iraqi war veteran, has also been detained.
Israel yesterday blamed Muslim militants backed by Iran for the bomb. Yitzhak
Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister, said he saw the hand of Hezbollah in the
attack.
"In our assessment there was concern that, after the blows Hezbollah has
sustained from Israeli forces, they and their patrons were liable to respond
somewhere in the world through some act,"' he told Israeli army radio.
Iran denied any involvement in the attack.
Argentina to expel Iran envoys over bombing links
From David Adams in Miami and Michael Theodoulou in Nicosia (Wednesday
August 10, 1994)
Argentina said yesterday it would expel Iranian diplomats involved in a bomb
attack on a Jewish community centre last month, but indicated that it would
not sever diplomatic relations with Iran for fear of reprisals.
The judge investigating the blast has obtained evidence linking Iranian
diplomats to the bombing of the Argentine-Jewish Mutual Aid Association on
July 18 which killed nearly 100 people.
American and Israeli officials helping in the investigation believe the
Iranian Government and a radical wing of Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based,
Iranian-backed guerrilla group, were responsible for recent bombings of
Jewish targets in London as well as in Argentina. Iran and Hezbollah deny
involvement.
Guido Di Tella, the Argentine Foreign Minister, said after a Cabinet meeting
that the Iranian diplomats would be asked to leave if the case against them
was proved. "That does not mean diplomatic relations would be broken it
implies a problem in the relationship, not an interruption,'' he said. Iran
is one of Argentina's main trading partners.
Suspicion of Iranian government involvement is partly based on the testimony
of Monousheh Moatamer, an Iranian dissident, who fled with his family to
Venezuela earlier this year.
On July 14 the Venezuelan government expelled four Iranian diplomats for
kidnapping Mr Moatemer and five family members and holding them at a Caracas
hotel. When Seyyed Reza Zargarbashi, the Iranian Ambassador, protested, he
was also expelled.
Mr Moatemer identified four Iranian diplomats in Buenos Aires as the planners
of the bombing. "The testimony he gave me was of great importance to
shed light on the facts,'' said Judge Juan Jose Galeano, who flew to Caracas
to interview Mr Moatemer last month.
The dissident also reportedly knew of a plan to bomb the Israeli Embassy in
London, according to President Menem's office. British officials say they
received no information before the London bombing on July 26 which wounded
13 people.
The Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires said Mr Moatemer is a former salesman who
left Iran to emigrate to America and is trying to damage relations between
Iran and Argentina with false statements.
Clarin, the Argentine newspaper, has published excerpts from a document
which it claims is a South American intelligence report on links between
Iranian diplomats in Caracas and underground cells of Hezbollah throughout
the region. Iranian diplomats provided terrorists
with "logistical support, arms and explosives, using the diplomatic pouch
for such ends'', said the document.
"In some cases, the explosives were delivered to the terrorists through
Shia communities living in the south of Brazil or in Uruguay,'' it added.
Western intelligence agencies have long known that Iranian embassies and
consulates around the world provide diplomatic cover, material support and
logistical assistance to Iran's secret services.
The official believed to be behind the murder of Iranian dissidents abroad is
Ali Fallahiyan, 45, Iran's Intelligence Minister, who in an interview on
Iranian television in 1992 boasted of his organisation's success in hunting
down Tehran's opponents.
According to intelligence sources, Iran uses agents of Hojatoleslam
Fallahiyan's Ministry for
Intelligence and Security, known as Vevak, to assassinate Iranian dissidents.
But Tehran has tried to distance itself from attacks against Jewish and
Western targets by using Hezbollah, not Vevak.
The militant group guided the organisations that kidnapped more than 40
Westerners in Lebanon. Iran provided a safe haven for the leading
kidnappers, including Imad Mughniyeh, leader of the Islamic Jihad group
which kidnapped Terry Waite, John McCarthy and Brian Keenan.
Hojatoleslam Mughniyeh now heads Hezbollah's foreign operations department and
is suspected by some Western sources of planning the bombings in London and
Argentina.
When he first moved to Iran in the late 1980s, he was reportedly kept on a
tight leash by President Rafsanjani, who hoped better relations with the
West would improve Iran's economy. But Hojatoleslam Rafsanjani's star has
waned along with Iran's worsening economy, while his radical opponents led
by Ali Khamenei, the spiritual leader, have gained in strength.
CIA confirms Tehran's role in bombing of Jewish targets
By Ian Brodie in Washington Michael Theodoulou and Hazhir Teimourian (Friday
August 12, 1994)
THE Central Intelligence Agency yesterday confirmed Iran's continued role in
sponsoring terrorism and said that the bombing attacks against Jewish
centres and embassies in Argentina and Britain were carried out with the
full knowledge of the Islamic government in Tehran.
James Woolsey, the CIA Director, believes Iran's intelligence service either
executed the attacks or supervises those committed by its surrogates of
which Hezbollah was the most dangerous. Iran, or Hezbollah, has been
suspected in three acts of terrorism in the past month: the blast at the
Israeli Embassy in London that injured 13, the blowing up of an aircraft
over Panama with the loss of 21 lives, and the car bomb outside a Jewish
centre in Buenos Aires which killed 96 people.
The CIA revelations came after an Argentine judge issued arrest warrants for
four Iranian diplomats he said had been involved in the Buenos Aires
bombing. President Menem has threatened to expel the Iranian Ambassador, but
Iran has denied any role in the attack.
Mr Woolsey, in a report to the US Senate intelligence committee, said that
Iran's terrorism had been directed primarily against Iranian emigres who
were opposed to the Islamic regime in Tehran. "There has been no
lessening of Tehran's commitment to terrorism since President Rafsanjani won
power in the summer of 1989.''
Indeed, under his leadership, Iranians or their surrogates had assassinated
several prominent opposition figures. He added that there was no sign that
either Hojatoleslam Rafsanjani or Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme spiritual
leader, intended to halt such operations.
Tehran, however, yesterday accused Israel and America of putting pressure on
Argentina to arrest its diplomats. It also denied that an Iranian exile,
whose testimony was the basis of the allegations, had ever worked for the
government.
In Tehran, President Rafsanjani, according to reliable sources yesterday, is
said to have had a heated row with Ayatollah Khamenei and been outraged by
the terrorist strike. "The first he knew of the bombing was after it
happened,'' a source said.
The attack on the Jewish centre in Buenos Aires is believed to have been
planned by a special unit in Tehran charged with striking at soft Israeli
and Jewish targets around the world. Overall responsibility for the unit
lies with Ayatollah Khamenei, who was once the President's ally but is now
his bitter rival.
President Rafsanjani's apparent ignorance of the bombing underlines his
inability to control the wilder elements in Tehran who are opposed to his
Western-style free-market reforms and believe he is trying to steer Iran
away from the fundamentalist philosophy of the late Ayatollah Khomeini's
revolution.
The President has staked his reputation on an ambitious programme of market
reforms whose failure, caused mainly by the fall in oil prices, has eroded
his prestige. Ayatollah Khamenei's star has risen, enabling him to tighten
his grip on foreign policy and the security services. The two have clashed
publicly over key foreign policy issues.
Informed Iranians and diplomats in Tehran say that the rift began when the
Western hostages in Lebanon were freed without Washington rewarding Iran by
releasing its $11 billion (£7 billion) of assets, frozen since the 1979
seizure of the American embassy. "`Khamenei was very much against their
release and said Rafsanjani had made us look like we'd been duped by
America,'' an Iranian government official said.
It is widely believed in Tehran that the two leaders had a blazing row last
autumn over Iran's threats against the life of Salman Rushdie, author of The
Satanic Verses. The President, it is said, hinted at the dissolution of
the shadowy 15 Khordad foundation which placed a $2 million bounty on the
novelist's head. Ayatollah Khamenei then went on state radio to assert that
the edict against Mr Rushdie was more than a fatwa: it was a hokm, a ruling
that Muslims worldwide were duty-bound to enact.
Ayatollah Khamenei has also reportedly rehabilitated Hojatoleslam Ali Akbar
Mohtashemi, who founded the Lebanese Hezbollah in 1982 and is one of
President Rafsanjani's main critics. He has since taken charge of a
guerrilla training centre.
The President has been thwarted in his efforts to transfer Emad Mughniyeh, the
Hezbollah figure behind the kidnapping of Western hostages in Beirut in the
1980s, back to Lebanon.
He now has his own section, the Department of Qods (Jerusalem) Operations
within the Ministry of Intelligence and Islamic Guidance, thought to have
taken advantage of the large Shia Muslim communities in Argentina and
Britain to organise the latest attacks.
FBI investigates Iran envoy connection
Gabriella Gamini in Rio de Janeiro, David Orr in Nairobi and Michael Evans,
Defence Editor (Thursday August 13, 1998)
A suspected Iranian Government connection to the bombs that exploded near the
American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam was being investigated
yesterday as FBI officers hunted for evidence after last week's two attacks
which killed more than 250 people.
The focus was on four Iranian diplomats, all alleged by opponents of the
Tehran regime to have links with state-sponsored terrorism.
Two of the envoys, Kazem Tabatabai, Iranian Ambassador in Nairobi, and Ahmad
Dargahi, his Cultural Attache, left the Kenyan capital about two weeks
before the bomb explosions. This was confirmed by the Iranian Embassy.
It was also claimed that Ali Saghaian, the Ambassador in Dar es Salaam, and
Muhammad-Javad Tashkiri, his Cultural Attache, left Tanzania about the same
time.
When he was charge d'affaires in Buenos Aires in 1996, Mr Saghaian was accused
by a judge of being involved in organising terrorist cells in Argentina. He
was withdrawn to Tehran after serving for only two months in the country.
He was suspected of helping to organise the terrorist suicide-bomb attack on a
Jewish community centre in July 1994 in which 89 people were killed.
Although he was not posted to Buenos Aires as a diplomat until February 1996,
Argentine authorities said that they suspected Mr Saghaian was among
Iranians who travelled to Argentina before the bomb attack.
His name was supplied to Judge Juan Jose Galeano - who was investigating the
bomb attack - by Manoucher Moatamer, a former Iranian intelligence agent who
gave himself up to Venezuelan authorities in March 1996.
In statements to judicial and police officials in Argentina, Mr Moatamer
alleged that Mr Saghaian was among Iranian government representatives who
were part of a wider network which org anised and financed the Jewish centre
bombing.
In March 1996 Judge Galeano announced that he had evidence indicating that Mr
Saghaian and Moshem Rabbani, the Cultural Attache at the time, were involved
in organising the bombing. Iran immediately recalled the two diplomats, who
could not be arrested after claiming diplomatic immunity. No one has yet
been charged.
Judge Galeano said this week that an FBI report accused Iran of organising and
financing the 1994 Jewish community centre bombing.
Newspaper reports in Buenos Aires claimed that Mr Saghaian was a political
ally and right-hand man of Javad Mansouri, the founder and first commander
of the Revolutionary Guards.
Mr Mansouri is the author of Revolution and Diplomacy, which advises
that "our revolution can only be exported with grenades and explosives"
and calls for every Iranian embassy to be turned into an intelligence centre "and
base to export revolution".
Iranian dissidents claimed that Mr Tashkiri had been expelled from Jordan for "terrorist
activities" before being sent to Africa.
Last night a spokesman for the Iranian Embassy in Dar es Salaam said Mr
Saghaian was still in the Tanzanian capital but was not available for
interview. A different embassy official confirmed, however, that Mr Taskhiri
was out of the country.
The Iranian official in Dar es Salaam dismissed as "baseless"
allegations that diplomats from the embassy could have been behind the
bombing in the Tanzanian city.
Commenting on the absence of three Iranian diplomats before the bombings,
Western diplomatic sources in Kenya and Tanzania said that it was common for
senior Iranian envoys to return to Tehran in August. It was a time when the
Iranian intelligence services were known to hold conferences to plan
operations, according to one diplomatic source.
Mr Tabatabai, the Ambassador in Nairobi, was based in Baghdad between 1989 and
1992 and was appointed to Kenya in January 1997.
A US Embassy spokesman in Nairobi said: "The issue of Iran has come up.
Iran is on the list of four or five main suspects."
Although President Khatami of Iran has been trying to improve relations with
Washington, hardliners led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's
spiritual leader, remain virulently anti-American and are locked in a power
struggle with the President.
Only one organisation, a previously unknown group calling itself the Islamic
Army for the Liberation of Holy Places, has claimed responsibility for the
blasts. The sophisticated nature of Friday's attacks has led terrorism
experts to conclude that they were almost certainly masterminded by a
government.
Police on trial after suicide bombing
From Gabriella Gamini, South America Correspondent (Tuesday September 25,
2001)
Fifteen former policemen and five second-hand car dealers went on trial in
Buenos Aires yesterday, seven years after suicide bombers killed 86 people
in a raid on South America's largest Jewish cultural centre.
Hundreds of people who survived the attack and the families of those who
perished gathered outside the courtroom in the Argentine capital.
The former policemen and car dealers are accused of providing terrorists with
the stolen vehicle used in the bombing. They are not charged with carrying
out the attack. Although no evidence was revealed, Argentina, the United
States and Israel laid the blame on Middle Eastern terrorists backed by
Iran. Iran has rejected any involvement.
"The authorities in the United States already have clues on who carried
out the attacks in New York, and the Oklahoma bombing was also solved. We
have waited for years and still don't know who killed our loved ones,"
said Rosa Barreiros, whose son, Sebastian, 5, was killed in the Buenos Aires
bombing.
On July 18, 1994, two suicide bombers drove a van loaded with explosives to
the headquarters of the Israeli Argentine Mutual Aid Association, and
detonated it. The blast destroyed the seven-storey building and hit at the
heart of Argentina's Jewish community, the largest outside Israel and the
United States.
Lawyers representing some of the families and victims said that the case could
shed light on the worldwide activity of faceless Islamic militants currently
being investigated.
The trial could last ten months, with more than 1,200 witnesses giving
evidence. If convicted, five of the defendants facing the most serious
charges of acting as accessories to the bombers could face up to 25 years in
prison.
Among them is Juan Jose Ribelli, a former Buenos Aires provincial police chief
accused of heading a mafia-style gang of corrupt police officers that turned
a blind eye to the theft of the van used in the attack.
