Agence France Presse – A judge issued an international arrest warrant Thursday for Iranian ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and other top former Tehran officials in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish charity in Argentina that killed 85 people.
Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral told AFP he had asked the government of Iran as well as Interpol to hand over the former president on a warrant issued for "crimes against humanity" in the bombing attack on the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association, a Jewish charities federation office, in which 85 people died and 300 were injured.
"A close analysis at the request of the national prosecutor resulted in this (warrant)," he told AFP.
No one has ever been convicted for the bombing, which occurred on the morning of July 9, 1994.
Another attack in 1992 on the Israeli embassy, in which 22 people were killed and 200 were wounded, also remains unsolved.
Lawyers for the Jewish charity have long accused the Shiite militia Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, of carrying out the attack.
A succession of Argentine governments has been accused of botching or undermining the investigation.
President Nestor Kirchner has taken up the cause, as he has in many human rights cases stemming from Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
Kirchner has said "grave failures of justice" had prevented the resolution of the case.
Members of the World Jewish Council, including chairman Israel Singer and president Edgar Bronfman, have pressured Kirchner for progress on the case.
Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman charged last year that a Lebanese member of Hezbollah, Ibrahim Hussein Berro, had participated in the bombing, citing Argentine security officials and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Shiite fundamentalist group Hezbollah denied the claims, saying Berro had been killed in southern Lebanon.
Iran, a key backer of Hezbollah, also has denied allegations that it was involved in the blast.
The leader of the Jewish charity, Luis Grynwald, and Jorge Kirszenbaum of an Argentine Jewish organization umbrella group sought UN sanctions against Iran.
Nisman said that Berro crashed a car bomb into the seven-storey building in Once, a neighborhood with numerous Jewish-owned businesses.
Argentina has the largest Jewish community in Latin America with 300,000 Jews.
Still, some Jewish graves in Argentina have been desecrated near the "tri-border" area shared by Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, which US officials suspect is a haven for terrorists connected with Al-Qaeda.
Investigators say the men who blew up the Jewish charity and the Israeli embassy entered Argentina through the tri-border area.
Besides Iran’s 1989-1997 president Rafsanjani, warrants were issued for 1989-1987 Irani intelligence and security minister Ali Fallahijan; former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati; former head of the Revolutionary Guards Mohsen Rezai; former commander of Al-Quds Forces and of the Revolutionary Guards Ahmad Vahidi; former cultural attache to the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires Mohsen Rabbani; former embassy third secretary Ahmad Reza Asghari; and former ambassador to Buenos Aires Hadi Soleimanpour, who was jailed in London in 2003 at Argentina’s request, but was freed for lack of evidence.
