30 years after the attack on the Israeli Embassy: what happened to the cause and why it looks like a case without destiny

The only certainty that Justice has about the attack that blew up the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires 30 years ago is that behind that bomb was the terrorist group called Islamic Jihad, the armed wing of Hezbollah. Two arrest warrants ordered in 2015 by the Supreme Court of Justice against Lebanese Hussein Mohamad Ibrahim Suleiman and Colombian José Salman El Reda Reda and a series of exhorts abroad became the last movements recorded in the case in which there were never arrested and which, over time, seems increasingly difficult to move forward.

It all happened 30 years ago. At 14.47 on March 17, 1992, the building on Arroyo 916 Street where the headquarters of the Israeli Embassy operated blew up. The police initially spoke of 29 dead, but only 22 deaths could be confirmed in the case: nine employees and officials of the Embassy, three masons and two plumbers, a taxi driver and three pedestrians, a priest from a neighbouring church and three elderly people staying in a residence a few meters away. Their names were portrayed on a plaque in the dry square that was raised at the site of the attack.

It was a shipment of pentrite and trinitrotoluene — fitted out in the back of a Ford F 100 van — that detonated in the building, as established by the Supreme Court in late 1999. The van had been stopped in the parking lot that Dakota SA ran in Cerrito between Juncal and Arroyo. Around the time of the explosion, the vehicle drove through Arroyo and when it arrived at the embassy, it got on the sidewalk and exploded. “It was a scene of war”, said more than once the rescuers who came to the area and did not understand what had happened. Argentina had entered the scene of world terrorism and two years later, in an attack with an almost traced methodology, another bomb would end the AMIA headquarters and the lives of 85 people.

It was filed with the Supreme Court of Justice because it affected a foreign State. The then president of that court Ricardo Levene was in charge of the investigation and delegated the task to the criminal secretary Alfredo Bisordi until in 1992 he became a judge of the then new National Chamber of Criminal Cassation. Bisordi resisted the idea of the car bomb and argued that explosives could have entered through materials. It is that, as in the case of AMIA, the Embassy at that time was under renovation.

However, the idea of an implosion was dismissed by the Court that ratified the hypothesis of the car bomb, based on the crater in front of the fallen building, the discovery of various parts of the van's engine and different statements.

The track on Islamic Jihad, the armed arm of Hezbollah, was held in different cables of the Argentine Embassy in Lebanon in February 1992, referring to the repercussions of the violent death of Abbas Musawi, secretary of Hezbollah, his wife and a son of both, as explained by the Supreme Court itself through former criminal secretary Esteban Canevari.

The court confirmed that the group itself had claimed responsibility for the incident the day after it occurred by publishing a request in the newspaper An Nahar in Beirut, Lebanon. In addition, the statements of Argentine diplomats in that country confirmed that information.

In this context, under the old Code of Criminal Procedure, the Supreme Court tried Imad Mughniyah, called him into inquiry and ordered his international arrest. According to information provided by the State Department of the United States Government, the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany and the SIDE, Mughniyah was in charge of the central and external security apparatus of Hezbollah and was responsible for Islamic Jihad at the time of the attack.

The investigation deepened the links between Hezbollah and suspected persons allegedly engaged in commercial activities in the area known as the “Triple Border”. There appears the figure of Samuel Salman El Reda Reda, who was also investigated in the case of the attack on AMIA.

According to the Embassy's case, during 1992 his brother, José Salman El Reda Reda, had been arrested and prosecuted by the federal courts in Rosario for having been kidnapped a significant amount of counterfeit dollars — known as “superdollars” — which would finance terrorist activities. The Supreme Court also ordered the capture of José Salman El Reda.

Another clue addressed by the investigation, about research by the then SIDE, pointed to the report of intelligence agencies in other countries. It indicated that in June 2001, Hussein Mohamad Ibrahim Suleiman, an operational agent of Hezbollah, was arrested in the Kingdom of Jordan, who allegedly reported that in 1991 he traveled to Sao Paulo and that in early 1992, in Foz do Iguaçu, he received explosives that he transported to Argentina by bus - hidden in food boxes. Those explosives, he said, were used for the attack on the Israeli Embassy. In order to check this information, trades were issued to the various security forces, appeals to different countries and trades to intelligence agencies. There are no certainties about that version.

Nor could the famous witness “C” in the AMIA case be credited, when he referred to Jaffar Saadat Ahmad Nia, designated as an Iranian diplomat who would be responsible for logistics in acts of terrorism. He was a civilian attaché at the Iranian Embassy in Brazil between June 8, 1991 and December 28, 1993. These indications indicated that he had visited Argentina between March 16 and 18, 1992, but the information ended up being denied.

In 2006, the father of one of the victims, Carlos Susevich, who died today, came forward as a complainant and asked that the crime be declared imprescriptible. The Court did not accept this argument, but it did reaffirm that the case will remain open while suspects are searched. And on December 20, 2006, he reiterated the international arrest orders of Imad Mughniyah and José Salman El Reda.

According to news reports, Mughniyah reportedly died on 12 February 2008 in an attack in Damascus, due to the explosion of a car bomb. His death was reportedly confirmed by a copy of the death certificate that Interpol sent to UFI AMIA, which was later submitted to the Embassy's case.

The status of the case became relevant when in 2015, following the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, then-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner publicly demanded to know what state the file was in. That demand by today's vice-president led then-Supreme Court President Ricardo Lorenzetti to point out: “In the case of the Israeli Embassy there was a judgment in 1999, that is long before the formation of the current Court. There is a sentence. That sentence determined who the culprits were. And he found guilty a group, Hezbollah, part of Islamic Jihad. That judgment is published and consented to by the parties, so that we as a court cannot modify what has already been accepted and is a matter judged.”

The phrase “res judicada” suggested that the case was closed, but days later the Judicial Information Center (ICJ) published a clarification, describing what had happened in the case and confirmed that the investigation was still open. Six months later, the Court reiterated the capture of El Reda Reda and ordered the international capture of Hussein Mohamad Ibrahim Suleiman. In addition, he asked to declassify the files of the former SIDE on the investigation of the first terrorist attack, something that was signed by CFK.

Since then, the investigation into the attack on the Embassy has not generated any further progress. The sense of impunity surrounds survivors. Today, the victims will be remembered in a new tribute ceremony, which will renew the demands of Justice.

These were the victims of that attack:

Lezcano de Albarracín, Escorcina. Argentina. Stayed at the San Francisco de Asís Home.

Arlia de Eguía I followed, Celia Haydee. Argentina. Stayed at the San Francisco de Asís Home.

Baldelomar Siles, Carlos. Bricklayer. Argentine of Bolivian origin.

Ben Raphael, David Joel. Israeli diplomat. Minister Counsellor of the Embassy. Married with two children.

Ben Zeev, Eli. Israeli diplomat. Attaché at the Embassy. Married with two children.

Berenstein of Supaniky, Beatrice Monica. Argentina. Married to a daughter. Administrative employee of the Embassy.

Haze, Juan Carlos. Argentinean. Priest of Mater Admirabilis.

Cacciato, Ruben Cayetano Juan. Argentinean. Driver of the Ford Falcon taxi that was driving around Arroyo.

Carmon, Eliora. Israeli. Wife of the Counselor and Consul Danny Carmon. Mother of 5 children. Administrative Employee of the Embassy.

Droblas, Marcela Judith. Argentina. Administrative employee of the Embassy. (Secretary of the Cultural Attaché, Rafael Eldad)

Elowson, Andrew. Argentinean. Pedestrian

Lancieri Lonazzi, Michelangelo. Uruguayan. Pedestrian.

Leguizamón Hannibal. Paraguayan. Plumber

Machado Castro, Alfred Oscar. Argentine of Bolivian origin. Bricklayer.

Machado Castro, Freddy Remberto. Bolivian. Bricklayer.

Mandaroni, Francisco. Italian. Plumber.

Meyers, Francisca Eva Elisa. Argentina. Stayed at the San Francisco de Asís Home

Quarin, Alexis Alexander. Argentinean. Pedestrian

Saientz, Mirta. Argentina. Administrative employee of the Embassy. (Secretary to Ambassador Dr. Izthak Shefi)

Sherman of Intraub, Rachel. Argentina. Administrative employee of the Embassy.

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