Crying (Iranian) wolf in Argentina

[Judi Lynn]

Jan 25, 2008

Crying (Iranian) wolf in Argentina
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The Iranian defector who was the source of Argentina's allegation that Iranian officials began planning the July 18, 1994, terror bombing of a Jewish community center at a meeting nearly a year earlier had been dismissed as unreliable by US officials, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)agent who led the US team assisting the investigation in 1997-98.
(snip)

Bernazzani recalled that when he arrived in the Argentine capital, he found the only evidence the investigators claimed to have of Iranian responsibility was a surveillance tape of Iranian cultural attache Mohsen Rabbani shopping for a white Renault van similar to the one allegedly used in the bombing.

However, the original intelligence report on the surveillance, which is available to researchers in the official Argentine investigation files, shows that Rabbani was filmed on May 1, 1993 - nearly 15 months before the bombing. That was also three-and-a-half months before the time Mesbahi would later claim top Iranian officials had made the decision to plan the bombing operation.

Bernazzani said Argentine intelligence had also used a technique called "link analysis" of telephone records to make a circumstantial case that the Iranian Embassy had been involved in the plot. The analysis consisted of linking a series of calls made between July 1, 1994, and the bombing 17 days later to a mobile phone in the Brazilian city of Foz de Iguazu, which must have been made by the "operational group" for the bombing. They claimed a link between a cell phone said to be owned by Rabbani and the other calls.

Bernazzani said he had regarded such a use of link analysis as "very dangerous" because, using the same methodology, "you could link my telephone with bin Laden's". The Argentine prosecutors' 2006 report, however, devoted several pages to a presentation of the "link analysis" of phone calls as evidence of Iranian culpability.

The three top US diplomats in Buenos Aires from the time the AMIA was bombed - ambassador Cheek, deputy chief of mission Ronald Goddard and chief of political section William Brencick - all agreed in interviews that US and Argentine efforts had turned up no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah had been involved in the bombing.

Cheek, who was ambassador in Argentina from 1993 until late 1996, said in an interview last May, "To my knowledge there was never any real evidence . They never came up with anything."

More:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JA25Ak02.html

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Guess who was the President of Argentina at the time of the bombing. It was _Bush family friend, scabby old Carlos Menem.



The new Mrs. Carlos Menem, Menem and his American friend



1994 bombing

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/05/16/riot2_wideweb__470x312,0.jpg

riots due to deranged economic policy

Partial timeline, from the BBC:

1989 - Carlos Menem of the Peronist party is elected president. He imposes an economic austerity programme.

1990 - Full diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom are restored, with Argentina still maintaining its claim to the Falklands.

1992 - Argentina introduces a new currency, the peso, which is pegged to the US dollar. A bomb is placed in the Israeli embassy, 29 people are killed.

1994 - A Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires is bombed. 86 people are killed and more than 200 injured.

1995 - Menem is re-elected.

1996 - Finance Minister Domingo Cavallo is dismissed. Economic hardship leads to a general strike in September.

1997 - A judge in Spain issues orders for the arrest of former Argentine military officers on charges of participating in the kidnapping and killing of Spanish citizens during the 'Dirty War'. Argentine amnesty laws protect the accused.

Recession bites

1998 - Argentine judges order arrests in connection with the abduction of hundreds of babies from women detained during the 'Dirty War'.

Recession starts.

1999 - Fernando de la Rua of the centre-left Alianza opposition coalition wins the presidency, inherits 114 billion-dollar public debt.

2000 - Strikes and fuel tax protests. Beef exports slump after an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. Soya exports suffer from concerns over the use of genetically modified varieties. The IMF grants Argentina an aid package of nearly 40 billion dollars.

2001 February - Argentina recalls its ambassador to Cuba after President Castro accuses Argentina of 'licking the yankee boot'. Castro made the remarks in an apparent reference to Argentina's support for US condemnation of Cuba's record on human rights.

Argentina and the United Kingdom agree that Argentine private aircraft and vessels may now visit the Falkland Islands again.

2001 March - President de la Rua forms a government of national unity and appoints three finance ministers in as many weeks as cabinet resignations and protests greet planned austerity measures.

2001 July - Former president Carlos Menem is charged with heading an 'illicit organisation' that violated international arms embargoes against Croatia and Ecuador in the early 1990s. A court throws out all arms trafficking charges against Menem, freeing him after five months of house arrest.

More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/country_profiles/1196005.stm

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A tv program on cable tv said in the last few weeks that some German Nazis who were living in Argentina arranged that bombing, as believed by some Nazi hunters who said that the bombing had been meant as a message to them to stop poking around in Argentina to locate and arrest more Nazis, or uncover their Argentinian histories and families.

Interesting place to start reading, google Nazis in Argentina:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2004-37%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=+Nazis+in+Argentina+&btnG=Search