“The wound deepens every day without justice,” says the head of AMIA 29 years after the attack
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On the 29th anniversary of the attack on the AMIA headquarters in Buenos Aireswhich they asked for progress in the case investigating the terrorist attack of July 18, 1994, which killed 85 people and injured another 300, asked the presidential candidates to include in their proposals concrete actions against international terrorism to “May these crimes not happen again.”
Like every year since the attack, At 9:53 a.m., the sound of the siren was heard, which evokes the very moment of the explosion in the Pasteur 633 building, where relatives, citizens and officials gathered in memory of the victims and with the slogan “Absent justice. Let us say present”. .
“29 years ago they killed our sons and daughters and from that moment we cannot enjoy their growth,” said the announcer Lalo Mir, who this year conducted the ceremony from a box installed at the intersection of Pasteur and Viamonte, meters from the building. that July 18, 1994 was all dust and debris.
After holding a minute of silence in memory of the victims of the attack, a candle was lit to remember them and their names were pronounced one by one, while the audience added a resounding “present” in the middle of the morning cold.
At 9:53, the exact time the bombing of the Pasteur 633 Jewish mutual building took place, a siren was sounded / Photo: Leo Vaca
The head of the AMIA, Amos Linetzky, took the floor and maintained that the relatives of the victims and society needed the prosecutor’s office in charge of investigating the case to “present strong progress” in the investigation.which accumulates 29 years.
In a context of the campaign ahead of the presidential elections in October and with an auditorium in which various candidates for public office stood out, the leader asked the candidates to include proposals for the fight against terrorism.
“In these electoral times, I ask the candidates to include in their campaigns what their proposals are to guarantee that these crimes do not happen again,” he said from the box.
#AMIA29años I “The wound deepens every day without justice,” said the head of AMIAhttps://t.co/buw0Pjk8ZH
– Télam Agency (@AgenciaTelam) July 18, 2023
“It is not a chimera to think that terrorism can have firm and forceful responses. Will and decision are required. When justice is slow and inefficient, impunity increases with each passing day and it is unacceptable to live with it,” Linetzky completed.
And in that sense, he added: “We are today in this place, which they tried to destroy, to publicly state that they have not defeated us, and that demanding justice and punishment of the guilty is an ethical imperative that we will not renounce.”
The leader reaffirmed that Argentina “needs actions to fight international terrorism”and deplored that after 29 years “the legal framework to investigate, prevent and punish this type of crime has not been changed.”
Among the attendees were the Minister of Education, Jaime Perczyk, and the Secretary of Worship, Guillermo Olivieri, from the national government.
“29 years ago they killed our sons and daughters and since then we have not been able to enjoy their growth”
Also present were Claudio Epelman, executive director of the Latin American Jewish Congress and commissioner for interreligious dialogue of the World Jewish Congress; Waldo Wolff, Secretary of Public Affairs of the City of Buenos Aires; Leandro Santoro, Buenos Aires deputy and candidate for head of government (UxP); Jorge Macri, Buenos Aires Government Minister and pre-candidate for Head of Government (JxC); Javier Milei, presidential candidate for Libertad Avanza; Luis Petri, pre-candidate for vice president of Patricia Bullrich (JxC); Martín Lousteau, senator and candidate for Buenos Aires head of government (JxC); and Soledad Acuña, Buenos Aires Minister of Education.
Linetzky, speaking in particular about the cause, iHe insisted on the need for “new and substantial information to be produced from the prosecutor’s office.”
“Since 1994 we know that the attack was perpetrated by means of a car bomb, and that the Islamic Republic of Iran, its diplomats and the terrorist organization Hezbollah were responsible, and that they had the collaboration of a local connection,” he stressed.
He added that, however, “they still” do not know “where the truck bomb was finished being assembled; who entered it in the parking lot near the AMIA or which was the operational group that carried out the last step of the attack; where they stayed, who protected them”, nor “whether the excarapintadas participated or not in the attack”, in reference to a group of Army soldiers who staged uprisings between 1987 and 1990, when Argentina was already a democracy since 1983.
Linetzky criticized that Federal Court number 6in charge of the case, is still vacant, which will imply that when a new magistrate assumes the investigation of the file, he must “start from scratch.”
The Agrupación Memoria Activa also convened its traditional act in Plaza Lavalle, and considered that there is “a guilty State for lack of justice and for not protecting life” / Photo: Leo Vaca
“We also hope that brother countries join to combat international terrorism. Hezbollah continues to operate in the area of the Triple Border (Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay). Their attempts to penetrate the province of Misiones should be a concern because they are not a threat of the past, but of the present,” he warned.
Linetzky also demanded clarification of the case in which the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was the head of the AMIA Special Unit, is being investigated.in charge of investigating the attack, and asked that it be known what was the reason that “an Iranian Venezuelan plane” had to reach Argentina.
He also questioned that Iranian officials and diplomats accused of ideologues of the attack “walk around different parts” of the world.
“Last year we were embarrassed in Nicaragua with the presence of one of the defendants in the presence of the Argentine ambassador,” he said, referring to the presence of Iran’s Vice President for Economic Affairs, Mohsen Rezai, at the resumption of Daniel Ortega as president of the Central American country, a fact that was repudiated by the Argentine Foreign Ministry.
“Since 1994 we know that the attack was perpetrated by means of a car bomb, and that the Islamic Republic of Iran, its diplomats and the terrorist organization Hezbollah were responsible, and that they had the collaboration of a local connection”
Linetzki added that “a few months ago Qatar received one of the suspects with honors” and said: “Millions of people watching how that country mocked Argentine justice, didn’t the authorities find out?”
“On the other hand, we are not surprised that certain superficial movements appear around the anniversary, such as the last ruling requesting the international capture of characters who were in the file years ago but Judge (Daniel) Rafecas agreed to sign it now,” he completed in reference to the international arrest warrant for four Lebanese citizens who would be in Paraguay on suspicion of having been “secondary participants” in the attack.
This is a request from the Fiscal Unit referring to four suspects as alleged secondary participants whose arrest requests were made by the prosecution in November and ordered by the judge last month.
Meanwhile, the act of this Tuesday ended with the words of friends of the victims and the song “Como la cigarra” by María Elena Walsh sung by the singer Jairo and her son Yako González.
