Beforethe mastermind of the AMIA attack was Iran’s former cultural attaché in Argentina, Mohsen Rabbani, and Rabbani’s boss, the former Iranian ambassador, Hadi Soleimanpour, and the third secretary of the diplomatic delegation, were involved in the operation itself. Ahmad Asghari. BeforeCarlos Telleldín, the then automaker with stolen parts, was an accomplice and participated in the plan of the attack. Nowthe report of the Israeli Intelligence service, the Mossad, published by The New York Times (NYT), with some more detail than Infobaethey say what no Argentine collaborated “on the ground”, that is to say in Buenos Aires, in the operation of the attack and neither does it mention that the Iranians from the embassy participated. In other words, he unties the four: Rabbani, Soleimanpour, Asghari and Telleldín. Furthermore, in the version of beforethe embassy itself functioned as the center of operations for the attacks. Now, “The Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires was monitored and no unusual activity was perceived”says the Mossad. Beforethe attacks on the Israeli Embassy and the AMIA were motivated by the fact that the president of that time, Carlos Menem, failed to fulfill commitments with Iran to supply nuclear technology or that Menem sent ships to the Persian Gulf to attack Iraq or that Menem, being of Arab origin, he first visited Israel before the Arab countries. Nowthe motive was much smaller: the response of Hezbollah -considered by Israel to be the armed wing of Iran- to two attacks by Israel in Lebanon, one in 1992 and the other in 1994. Although Israeli officials and leaders of the Jewish community have almost a week trying to lower the price of the Mossad report, the truth is that what is known about that text, with some additional ones in Infobae, it produces a certain impact in a judicial case that was not nourished by evidence but, almost exclusively, by intelligence reports. It is impossible to know what is true, because the narratives are not supported by evidence: it is an intelligence report correcting and even saying the opposite of the previous one and the previous one and the previous one.
Iran
The NYT Mossad text does not take responsibility away from Iran, but it does tone it down: it states that the regime of the ayatollahs approved, financed and even trained the operational command that came to Buenos Aires, although it was totally integrated by Lebanese.
After the publication in the American newspaper, they try to disguise that the report changes the role of Iran: of author matterl, “in the field”, becomes intellectual author. The attacks stopped having Iranian mobiles, to start having Lebanese mobiles.
It is a significant transformation that could produce judicial alterations, although it is not more than intelligence reports.
SIDE
The NYT mentions that, after the attack on the Embassy, the Israelis closely marked the Iranian embassy in Argentina and that is why they concluded that the diplomats did not participate. The text of Infobae he speaks little about the attack against the AMIA and the defendants of the Iranian diplomatic delegation in Buenos Aires are directly absent.
None reports that the SIDE also established a surveillance, to the point that the internal humor of the spies called Bomb Brigade, to the group that was in charge of monitoring and wiretapping diplomats in Tehran. Hours and hours of work were not turned into evidence, except in a single case.
It so happens that the SIDE, following up on Rabbani, took a photo of him when he went to a used car dealership on Avenida Juan B. Justo to ask prices for a van. It was in November 1993 and the attache was dressed in Islamic religious robes. That photo was adopted as proof that Rabbani was involved in the attack. It seems inconsistent that someone who plans to use a vehicle for an attack, come to ask the price personally, dressed in such a flashy way and with a very long beard. But the Argentine justice adopted it as evidence.
In any case, the existence of Bomb Brigade and from the photo, they confirm what the Mossad says: the Iranians –at least those from the embassy– were closely marked and nothing unusual would have occurred.
Page 12 it was the only outlet to ask an Israeli official about Rabbani, Soleimanpour and Asghari. He went this Saturday to Lior Haiat, director of Public Diplomacy of the State of Israel, an office that reports directly to Prime Minister Yair Lapid. “Two things,” Haiat said. “First, Israel never mentioned Rabbani and those diplomats in an operational role. Second, having responsibility is not the same as having acted on the ground.” In other words, the prime minister’s spokesman acknowledged what the NYT transcribed, that there were no Iranians in the operation itself.
Consequence
Of course, the AMIA prosecutor, Sebastián Basso, cannot be guided by the publication of the article by Ronen Bergman in the NYT and by Román Lejtman in Infobae. Therefore, he is considering requesting the report from Israel, although the issue is doubtful — they say in the prosecution — because it does not have the status of an official document.
The truth is that, objectively, the report would make the accusation against Rabbani, Soleimanpour and Asghari weak. The first and the last have arrest warrants with red alerts from Interpol. The international police union did not, however, accept the arrest warrant against Soleimanpour because a London judge said there was no evidence against him. It was when he was detained in the British capital in 2003 and, after receiving 2,600 pages of the file sent to him by the then judge, Juan José Galeano, he considered that the accusation had no evidence support.
The report does not change anything for Telleldín either because he was already acquitted in December 2020, after the trial led by the Federal Oral Court number 3, and in which no evidence was found that he had participated in the attack. DAIA appealed and that appeal would now be weakened.
Tests
Of course, the problem is that the file is fed by intelligence reports to which are added other intelligence reports that say different things, and so on. And, to make matters worse, it is not about the texts of those reports but about the versions collected by journalists or other sources.
An issue that does not seem casual is that the reports do not provide elements that can be translated into judicial evidence. For example, it is said that explosives or detonators were buried in Parque Centenario, in the Federal Capital, an obvious nonsense because it is a public place where there are people walking and running at all hours. It is even mentioned that they buried a part near the artificial pool. But not a single address is given where the supposed group has been, and much less is it mentioned with which false documents they entered Argentina or were in Brazil.
Suicides
The Mossad, in the NYT and in Infobae says that the suicide bomber at the Israeli Embassy was a young Lebanese named Muhammad Nur al-Din, who went to live in Brazil at the end of the 1980s. There are no details about the name he used in the neighboring country and With what document did you enter Argentina? But the most striking of what is published is that it seems to say nothing about the suicide in the AMIA.
Any ill-considered person would suggest that it is no accident. There are no DNA profiles of the bodies of the victims of the Embassy of Israel and instead there are profiles in the AMIA case. In other words, there is no scientific way to identify the embassy suicide bomber and there is a genetic possibility of identification in the attack on Pasteur Street.
What’s more, Alberto Nisman carried out a serious act: he traveled to Chicago, United States, and took statements from Abbas and Hassan Berro, Ibrahim’s brothers, who the prosecutor said was the suicide. When he returned to Buenos Aires he maintained that the brothers confirmed that Ibrahim was the suicide. The court statement taken in Chicago says exactly the opposite and Abbas and Hassan spoke to the media the next day to disprove Nisman. But the most categorical thing was that the FBI, in 2017, did a DNA test and ruled out Berro as suicidal. At least in the report reproduced by the NYT and Infobae no mention is made of who was supposed to have driven the truck bomb.
Taken
The Mossad text has an exclusive informant: Hussein Suleiman Abu AbbasLebanese, Hezbollah, prisoner in Jordan since 2001. According to the report, Abu Abbas came to Buenos Aires and brought about four kilos of plastic explosives –TNT and C4– which were later used in the AMIA. It is that prisoner who reveals that he buried the four kilos of explosives in Centennial Park.
Page 12 asked prosecutor Basso, the former prosecutors of the AMIA Unit, the former heads of the AMIA Unit of the Ministry of Justice –including Mario Cimadevilla, who at the time was appointed to the position by Together for Change– already Supreme Court spokesmen How is it possible that someone who has been detained for 21 years has not declared before the Argentine justice? For now, this newspaper has received no response.
There is something even more difficult to understand. It is seen that the highest court, responsible for the investigation of the attack against the Embassy, received some information from intelligence services about Abu Abbas. This is stated in a report signed by the criminal secretary, Esteban Canevari, on March 4, 2015. As a result, On October 15, 2015, the Court ordered the international capture of the individual, who had allegedly already been imprisoned in Jordan for 14 years. It is not understood who had him in prison, to whom he confessed, why he did not testify in the Embassy case and why Nisman did not demand that he be made available for the AMIA file.
Now he appears as the main source of the Mossad and it happens that he is not too credible either: it cannot be ruled out that he has said what they asked him to say. The suspicion becomes strong as a result of the absurdity of the burial of explosive detonators in Parque Centenario.
The Reda
Another episode that has few explanations is that the Israeli report mentions that Samuel Salman El Reda was an operative in the attack on the Israeli embassy. He is the man who appears as coordinator in the AMIA case.
However, the Supreme Court – in its 2015 report, after Nisman’s death – does not consider him a participant in the attack operation and, instead, requested the capture of a brother, José Salman El Reda.
Anything
The Embassy and AMIA cases are exposed, from the first day, to reports incomprobables intelligence services, especially the CIA and Mossad. What has been happening since last Friday, when the NYTimes published Ronen Bergman’s note, is more of the same, with successive adjustments as a result of pressure from political, diplomatic and community authorities.
All these moves do nothing more than agree with the relatives of the victims who have always felt and continue to feel that they are being used for geopolitics and that the truth does not seem to matter to anyone. Except them.