2024-04-12T04:53:32+00:00
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/ More than three decades after the bloody attacks in Buenos Aires that targeted the Israeli embassy and a Jewish center, an Argentine court blamed Iran, declaring it a “terrorist state,” according to local media.
The ruling, which was reported by local media, stated that Iran ordered the attack in 1992 on the Israeli embassy and the attack in 1994 on the Jewish center of the “Argentine Israeli Mutual Association” (AMIA).
The court also accused the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, and described the attack on the Amia center – the bloodiest in Argentine history – as a “crime against humanity,” according to what local media reported from documents issued by the court.
Carlos Mahikis, one of the three judges who issued the decision, told Radio Con Vos, “Hezbollah carried out an operation that responded to a political, ideological and revolutionary plan authorized by a government, by a state,” referring to Iran.
In 1992, an attack on the Israeli embassy left 29 people dead. Two years later, an attack on the Amiya Center was carried out with a truck loaded with explosives, killing 85 people and wounding 300.
No party claimed responsibility for the 1994 attack, but Argentina and Israel have long maintained that the Lebanese Hezbollah carried it out at Iran’s request.
Prosecutors accused senior Iranian officials of ordering the attack, while Tehran denied any involvement in the matter.
Argentina has the largest Jewish community in Latin America, comprising about 300,000 people. This country is also considered home to immigrant communities from the Middle East, especially from Syria and Lebanon.
On Thursday, the judges considered the “Amiya” attack a crime against humanity, and blamed then-President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in addition to other Iranian officials and members of Hezbollah.