Bombings Argentina

Diplomatic relations between Argentina and Iran were strained to the breaking point Thursday after the Buenos Aires government received evidence that implicates Iranian officials in the bombing of a Jewish community center that killed nearly 100 people. "If the evidence is proven true, it leads right to the Iranian Embassy" in Buenos Aires, a well-placed Argentine government source said.

An Argentine judicial panel Thursday acquitted all 22 defendants charged in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center here, ending a three-year trial rife with irregularities and leaving unanswered the question of who was behind the worst act of anti-Semitic violence on Latin American soil. The chief defendants were four Buenos Aires provincial police officers and a mechanic linked to the explosives-laden van that destroyed the seven-story Argentine-Israelite Mutual Assn.

Argentine police are investigating a report that German terrorist Andrea Martina Klump, a member of the Red Army Faction, may have entered this country days before a car bomb demolished the Israeli Embassy, killing at least 28 people. The reports on Klump were sketchy and sometimes contradictory, but they triggered speculation Friday that she helped Muslim terrorists in the bomb plot.

Reformist and hard-line factions have closed ranks in demanding the release of a former Iranian diplomat accused of murder in connection with the bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina. British police arrested Hadi Soleimanpour, Iran's former ambassador to Argentina, last week. He is being held pending a decision on whether he is to be extradited to Buenos Aires to face charges in the deaths of 85 people in the 1994 attack.

The tipster surfaced a week before the terrorist bomb destroyed a Jewish community center here in 1994 and killed 86 people, the bloodiest anti-Semitic attack ever in the Americas. His name was Wilson Dos Santos. He was a frightened Brazilian who talked his way into the Argentine Consulate in Milan, Italy, with a wild story to tell. He was 38, lean and dapper. He had green eyes, and he was missing the four fingers of his right hand.

The smoke has not cleared. On July 18, 1994, a terrorist car bomb devastated a Jewish community center here, killing 87 people and wounding more than 200 in the deadliest anti-Semitic attack outside Israel since the Holocaust. Nearly two years later, the bombing of the Argentine-Jewish Mutual Assn. and a similar 1992 attack on the Israeli Embassy remain unsolved.

Workers uncovered more bodies Wednesday in the bomb-wrecked rubble of the Israeli Embassy, while a terrorist group in the Middle East claimed responsibility for the devastating attack. In Beirut, a statement bearing the name of the pro-Iranian group Islamic Jihad (Islamic holy war) claimed responsibility for the bombing, which it said was a suicide attack carried out by an Argentine who had converted to Islam. By nightfall, officials had confirmed 21 deaths from the Tuesday bombing.

A little-known Islamic organization calling itself the Partisans of God has indirectly claimed responsibility for the bombing of Jewish organization offices in Argentina and the crash of a plane carrying Jewish businessmen in Panama. The statement distributed in south Lebanon seems to support Israeli accusations that Lebanese militants with backing from Iran were behind the Buenos Aires attack.

It is with pain that 92-year-old Samuel Rollansky thinks of rebuilding. The bomb that ripped through the heart of Argentina's Jewish community not only killed almost 100 people--it also destroyed Rollansky's lifework, one of the world's most precious collections of Jewish historical books and papers. "As Jews, we are accustomed to having to start over," he said quietly, cradling a volume of "Master Works of Yiddish Literature," which he published more than 30 years ago. "It is an obligation.

Argentina's Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant Friday for a top Hezbollah security official for the 1992 car bombing of the Israeli Embassy here that killed 29 people. Argentina, its large Jewish community and Israel blame the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, or Party of God, and the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad for that attack and another on the city's Jewish community center in 1994 that killed 86 people.

Swiss and Argentine authorities are investigating an allegation that former Argentine President Carlos Menem received a $10-million bribe from Iranian agents to cover up Tehran's alleged role in an anti-Semitic terrorist bombing in Buenos Aires in 1994, officials said Wednesday. Swiss authorities opened an inquiry in Geneva last week based on a request from Argentines investigating the van bomb attack that killed 85 people at the Argentine-Israelite Mutual Assn.

For years, the families have waited and hoped. They imagined a day when the terrorists who transformed an office building into a tomb would sit before a judge and be held to account for their crime. They imagined an international conspiracy exposed to the world. But in South America, justice is not often swift.

A Pakistani man who Argentine sources say is wanted for questioning in the bombings of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 and of a Jewish cultural center there in 1994 is in custody in Los Angeles, Immigration and Naturalization Service officials said Monday. INS spokeswoman Nancy Cohen said Mohammad Abass Malik was arrested on grounds that he was in the United States without proper documentation. The 1994 bombing killed 86 people, and 29 died in the embassy blast.

Argentina's Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant Friday for a top Hezbollah security official for the 1992 car bombing of the Israeli Embassy here that killed 29 people. Argentina, its large Jewish community and Israel blame the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, or Party of God, and the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad for that attack and another on the city's Jewish community center in 1994 that killed 86 people.

The tipster surfaced a week before the terrorist bomb destroyed a Jewish community center here in 1994 and killed 86 people, the bloodiest anti-Semitic attack ever in the Americas. His name was Wilson Dos Santos. He was a frightened Brazilian who talked his way into the Argentine Consulate in Milan, Italy, with a wild story to tell. He was 38, lean and dapper. He had green eyes, and he was missing the four fingers of his right hand.

An Iranian woman has been charged in the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. Police detained Nahrim Mokhtari at the Ezeiza International Airport on the edge of Buenos Aires after she disembarked from a flight from Paris that was bound for Uruguay. Mokhtari is the first person to be charged in the bombing, which claimed 29 lives. Israeli and U.S. intelligence agencies have attributed the attack to Iranian-supported terrorist groups.

Authorities investigating the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994 were interrogating Monday more than a dozen police officers suspected of links to the terrorist attack. The arrests of several high-ranking commanders and other officers of the Buenos Aires provincial police came days before Thursday's two-year anniversary of the bombing that killed 87 people, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack outside Israel since World War II.

Eleven Buenos Aires police officers were arrested and six more were being sought in the probe of a 1994 car bombing of a Jewish center that killed 87 people, the police chief said Saturday. Chief Pedro Klodczyk said a federal judge had ordered the police held in connection with the alleged illegal sale of vehicles, including one believed to have been used in the attack on the Argentine-Jewish Mutual Assn. in July 1994.

A war of words between Iran and Argentina has brought the two nations to the brink of a rupture in diplomatic relations. Days after Argentina expelled seven Iranian diplomats, however, Tehran's last remaining diplomat here recently greeted visitors to the heavily barred embassy with polite tones and gift-wrapped pistachio nuts.

The hunt for terrorists who slaughtered 86 people in the bombing of a Jewish community center here in 1994 has picked up unexpected momentum. The labyrinthine trail has led to the Middle East, Europe, Florida and Los Angeles, where last week Argentine investigators questioned an enigmatic witness in one of the deadliest anti-Semitic terrorist attacks. During his visit here in October, President Clinton met with relatives of the victims and promised U.S. support.