Nisman Report: Iran and Argentina Considered Pinning AMIA Bombing on ‘Right-Wing Groups’

Rodrigo Abd/Associated Press
Rodrigo Abd/Associated Press

A 300-page report by Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman accuses the government of cutting a trade deal with Iran to mask the nation’s role in bombing a Jewish civil center in 1994. The governments considered “ways to place blame for the bombing on right-wing groups and activists,” according to The New York Times. 

With Nisman found dead in his apartment on Sunday, the report is his only remaining work detailing the evidence for his case.

In an article highlighting Nisman’s report, The New York Times notes that the prosecutor had evidence that Iran–and, specifically, the terrorist group Hezbollah–were involved in the 1994 attack on the Israeli-Argentine Mutual Association (AMIA), which killed 85 people and injured hundreds. It remains the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history.

For years, Nisman’s report alleges, the Argentine government attempted to cut a deal with Iran in which they would receive oil at moderate prices should they help the orchestrators of the attack escape charges. In brainstorming ways to redirect the blame so that the Argentine government could prosecute someone for the crime, the governments considered “ways to place blame for the bombing on right-wing groups and activists.”

Argentine news outlet Infobae has reported that many of the pages in the report are dedicated to transcripts of phone conversations that appear to prove collusion between the Argentine and Iranian governments to ensure that the guilty parties involved in the AMIA bombing were not brought to justice. Nisman writes that the administration of President Fernández de Kircher engaged in a “deliberate attempt to protect those implicated” in the bombing, along with the government of Iran.

The Argentine government has responded by categorically denying the charges in the Nisman report, accusing ousted intelligence agent Antonio Stiusso of feeding Nisman false information. Instead of discussing the content of the charges, however, government officials have attempted to pivot the eyes of the public consciousness toward Nisman’s murder. President Fernández de Kirchner has asserted that she believes Nisman’s death was not a suicide, but that a mysterious “they,” defined only as associates of Stiusso with an agenda against the governments of Argentina and Iran, killed Nisman in an attempt to capitalize on anti-radical Islamist sentiment in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. “I have no proof, but I have no doubt,” the President wrote on her blog. Her chief of staff, Anibal Fernández, replied affirmatively to a reporter who asked if Nisman could be accurately described as “totally naive” in building his report, going so far as to tell reporters that “the complaint was not even written by him.”

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