Tag Archives: AMIA

From AMIA To Nice: A War We Still Fail To Agree To Fight

On July 18, it will be 22 years since a suicide bomber destroyed the headquarters of the Argentinean Jewish community in Buenos Aires (AMIA), killing 85 people and wounding hundreds. Two years earlier, the Israeli Embassy in the same city was destroyed.

In none of the cases has anybody been punished. Based on the findings the late Argentinean prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, Hezbollah along with its’ Iranian proxy were responsible for the attack. A day before he was to reveal his findings to the Argentinean Congress he was found dead with a bullet to his head.

We have spoken a lot about the corruption involving the case and the complicity of the Argentinean government in covering it up. Argentina even tried to involve Iran in the investigation alleging that would help resolve the case. To the contrary, the government only tried to normalize relations with Iran, considering the country to be a symbol of resistance against U.S. hegemony.

From another angle, I would say that the attack on AMIA was the precursor of the 9/11 attacks in 2001 in the heart of the United States as well as terrorist attacks that are taking place nowadays in Western Europe, Turkey, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and possibly future terrorist attacks that will take place elsewhere in the world.

To be sure suicide bombings have been taking place in the Middle East since the Iran/Iraq war. This type of warfare was introduced by Iran during that war and then applied in Lebanon against the Israelis, American marines and French peacekeepers by its proxy Hezbollah. Hezbollah began to carry out these attacks since the early 1980’s and quickly became a role model for other terrorist groups. Hamas has been using suicide bombers against Israel since 1989.

What was new about the attack on AMIA was that it was the first such attack in a crowded urban center outside of and far, far away from the Middle East.

Yet, it did not raise much concern in the Western world.

The United States, under domestic pressure from the organized Jewish community, expressed some interest in the case. The U.S. Government sent security delegations and held hearings in Congress but ultimately it decided not to focus too much on the case because no Americans were among the victims. The Europeans submerged in a sea of indifference and other Latin American countries did not view the issue as a priority.

But Al Qaeda quickly learned from the AMIA terrorist attack.

The AMIA case displayed ineptitude and corruption on the part of the Argentinean system to investigate and to hold the perpetrators responsible. Worldwide, there emerged a general apathy about finding the answers.

The morning of September 11, 2001, Al Qaeda executed the most murderous and heinous attacks on the United States at the heart of New York and Washington. The attack was far more devastating than the one on AMIA but to be sure, was inspired by the Iran/Hezbollah type of attacks.

It is known that Iran and Al Qaeda, despite both representing different sects (Iran is Shiite and Al Qaeda is Sunni), have cooperated at least since the mid 1990’s when Iran provided training to Al Qaeda operatives. Despite their sectarian differences and an element of tension, cooperation between the two groups was based on their mutual antipathy and hostility towards the United States. Iran even harbored Al Qaeda refugees after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, including senior Al Qaeda figures.

According to testimonies from former CIA officers including Clare Lopez, now Vice President for Research and Analysis at the Center for Security Policy, Iran provided training, logistical, and financial support, which enabled Al-Qaeda to carry out the 9/11 attacks. These agents also assert that cooperation between the two enabled the attacks on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Eastern Africa in 1998 and the attack on the U.S. Cole off the coast of Yemen in 2000.

Following the Hezbollah/Al Qaeda method, the Islamic State (ISIS) is now carrying out attacks in urban population centers, including Brussels, Paris, Nice and Istanbul with the goal of maximizing the killing of innocent people and creating panic. The terrorists have learned the know-how of how to cause pain and now are involved in a war against the West. It is becoming almost impossible to live a normal life in Europe today and the rest of the world is not safe either.

Since ISIS has the capacity to attack anywhere in the world, Latin America may be a perfect target for the group.

To begin with, corruption abounds in Latin America. Finding local cooperators and fixers is less and less of a problem. In a recent and thorough report by Joseph Humire from the Center to Secure A Free Society details emerge on how Iran has penetrated Latin America through commercial enterprises by taking over local Arab and Muslim associations, and by establishing “local fixers” that set up the logistics and establish a relation with different governments. Let us remember that in a terrorist organization, a diplomat or a businessman may also be part of a terrorist cell. Furthermore, Humire argues that the disappearance of prosecutor Alberto Nisman has undermined the main source of information and evidence about terrorist activity not only in Argentina but also in the rest of Latin America. Thus, according to Humire, the main block against terrorist activities has been eliminated.

ISIS can definitely penetrate Latin America in the same way Iran has done. It can take advantage of corruption, cooperate with drug traffickers, and take advantage of the lack of will and ineptitude on the part of local authorities. Argentina has demonstrated already how its police and legal system have failed to investigate the AMIA case. Likewise, the mysterious death of Nisman also showed the terrorists that the government had more of an interest in getting rid of those fighting for justice rather than those fighting against terrorism. Along the same lines, Brazil does not recognize terrorism directly in its lexicon and has done very little on the matter. It refuses to control the tri-border area as it should. However, after the terrorist attacks in Europe, Brazil began to take terrorism more seriously as it prepared to receive 600,000 foreign visitors for the upcoming Olympic Games.

We hope that with the coming to power of new governments in both Argentina and Brazil, more attention is paid to this issue. But it is also up to the United States and the West to pressure these countries and make them part of a global fight against terrorism.

In fact, last March, a lone individual who converted from Catholicism to Islam and was mentally disturbed, murdered a Jewish leader in a remote town in Uruguay. It is reasonable to assume that the man was indoctrinated via social media by radical Islamist groups such as ISIS. Yet, within days Uruguay’s Interior Minister ruled out the possibility that the murder was connected to radical Islam. To my knowledge, the investigation did not go any further. This shows the extent of the problem in Latin America and why the region could be a paradise for terrorist activities.

The war against terror requires unity of the West (including Latin America) with the support of moderate Arab and Muslim entities. This requires leadership the United States needs to take.

Since terrorist attacks are likely to multiply rather than recede, an effective show of unity to prevent further attacks would be the best homage we could pay to the victims of AMIA, 9/11, Brussels, Paris, Istanbul, Bangladesh, and Nice.

Turning The Tide on Argentina’s Judiciary And Law Enforcement

Twenty two years ago the largest terrorist attack ever to occur in the Western Hemisphere took place in Buenos Aires, Argentina when the Argentine/Jewish Community Center known as AMIA was blown to smithereens causing the deaths of 83 innocent people. To this day, the case remains unsolved with none of the perpetrators held to account. However, in 2005, a new prosecutor by the name of Alberto Nisman was assigned to the case. He was about to release his findings indicating that Iran along with Hezbollah carried out the attack. Mr. Nisman mysteriously died the night before he was to testify.

A year after the mysterious death of the Argentine prosecutor many things remain unresolved while others have become more transparent.

What needs to be resolved has not been resolved. How the attack on AMIA was bombed and by whom with exact detail and precision, nobody knows. Likewise, how Mr. Nisman died continues to be matter of speculation and opinion.

However, what is really clear and very transparent is the fact that both cases reveal that those in charge of the investigations, law enforcement and the judiciary, are incapable of functioning properly. This is partly due to ineptitude and lack of professionalism on the one hand and to politization and corruption on the other.

In 2013, as part of his investigation Nisman became concerned about a bilateral pact that then president, Cristina Kirchner had signed with Iran setting up a commission to jointly interrogate the Iranian suspects living in Tehran. Nisman considered this agreement unconstitutional and motivated by the Argentinean government’s desire to normalize relations with Iran in order to obtain commercial benefits. Nisman believed that such action was aimed at absolving the Iranians and therefore interfered with a criminal investigation. Thus, Nisman argued that former President Cristina Kirchner and some in her entourage including Foreign Minister Hector Timerman violated the law.

Two judges determined that Nisman’s findings had no merit. For almost a year, Ms. Kirchner and others tried to ruin Nisman’s reputation and defame him. Likewise, elements within the government suggested that Iran may not have been the perpetrator of the attack.

Yet, most recently some audios revealed the absurdity of Kirchner’s reasoning.

Mr. Timerman admitted in a taped conversation he had in 2012 with the leaders of the Argentine organized Jewish community that Iran bombed the AMIA building. Yet, he tried to persuade them that the best way to judicially solve the case was by negotiating with the Iran of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an ardent anti-Semite and Holocaust denier.

The Foreign Minister mocked the AMIA leaders by saying that they were not providing solutions, but he failed to explain how exactly negotiations with Iranian leaders would guarantee to bring them to confess their crimes. This idea is so unreal that it is logical to assume that the motivation for such “negotiation” was not to solve the case but to normalize relations with Iran, whether for commercial reasons (as Nisman suspected) or for ideological reasons (Argentina was very close to Venezuela that promoted the strengthening of Iran’s position in Latin America).

A recent book on Nisman, written by journalist Facundo Pastor,(not necessarily sympathetic to Mr. Nisman), reveals that Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, the judge in charge of investigating the AMIA case, denied any knowledge of Nisman’s investigation of President Cristina Kirchner. This attitude took Nisman by surprise. But Pastor also reveals that Kirchner promised Canicoba Corral’s son a position as a federal judge and lived up to her promise shortly afterwards.

Furthermore, after Nisman’s death, a new investigation against Nisman and his family was conducted over suspicions of money laundering through a foreign account. The judge in charge of that investigation was no other than Canicoba Corral. The judge publicly stated Nisman’s culpability from the beginning before it could be legally justified. For that reason, Nisman’s family requested the removal of the judge from the case. But is it conceivable that such ethical violations and conflict of interests be allowed in a country where the rule of law should prevail?

As per the AMIA investigation, it is interesting that in 2004, the judges released four Argentinean high police officers accused of collaborating with the AMIA building bombers. One of the them was the second in command of the Buenos Aires Province police, the largest police force in the country. As the government of Kirchner came to power it was decided to remove the judge in charge of the investigation because the judge tried to bribe a witness to testify against the policemen. Nisman himself, who then was appointed as a third prosecutor in the case, validated the accusation against the police officers but still those police officers were released very much to the dismay of Jewish community leaders.

The detention of the police officers was seen as a ploy orchestrated by the government of Kirchner’s predecessor and political enemy, Carlos Menem. It is far from clear if those police officers should have been released at all.

Having said so, a new testimony surfaced last year. In 1985, the Federal police planted a spy in the Argentine Jewish community. The purpose of such spying activity was to try to find out about the supposed secret plans of the Jewish community to conquer the Patagonia, a large region in Southern Argentina. This suspicion was based purely on the police force belief in the so-called “Plan Andinia”,which is an Argentinean version of the classic Russian pamphlet “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, that alludes to a world Jewish conspiracy.

The spy, whose was alias “Iosi”, became a familiar face in the Jewish community and became part of the board of directors of key entities in the Jewish community. He did not find any Jewish conspiracy or plan to conquer Southern Argentina. However, “Iosi” reported to his superior’s details about the Jewish community buildings, movements of people, schedules, and names. According to “Iosi”, after the attack on AMIA, he had no doubt that information he had sent to his superiors was used in the AMIA bombing.

Iosi’s testimony raises again the question why these policemen were released. Meanwhile, to add to this surreal story, after his release the policeman who was the chief suspect went on to study law and became a lawyer.

The challenge in Argentina is huge. Although the new president, Mauricio Macri has ordered the archives opened on the Nisman case and expressed commitment to justice, the Argentinean system is sick.

The law and those who practice it are in a state of permanent degeneration. Well too many judges and the security apparatus are inept , malicious or corrupt. Racketeering within the stateprevails. Too many Argentinean politicians have a cynical mindset that makes them think that such depraved behavior is normal and natural.

The reconstruction of the state, legal system and law enforcement must be the top priority for Mr. Macri. In Argentina, this, perhaps, is even more important than reformation of the economy.