Why Iran laid bare Argentina's double bar on AMIA

08/11/2021 19:03

• Clarín.com

• Opinion

Updated 08/11/2021 19:03

Mashhad is the second Iranian city behind the capital Tehran.

An oasis of cultural and religious treasures in the middle of the mythical Silk Road, bearer of a model botanical garden and saffron capital of the world: in the regions that surround it, 20% of the planet's production is grown.

In that marvelous and millenary geography

the attack on the AMIA was planned

, according to the investigation of the Argentine Justice.

It was on Saturday, August 14, 1993, at 4:30 p.m., when Mohsen Rabbani - chief of the Floresta mosque - and the third secretary of the Iranian embassy in Argentina, Ahmad Asghari, arrived in Mashhad from remote Buenos Aires.

According to prosecutors Alberto Nisman and Marcelo Martínez Burgos, they were the ones who carried out the

intelligence surveys

to determine the objective of the attack.

The complaint says that in Iran they coordinated everything with the Minister of Information, Ali Fallahijan, and a man of iron military training who led the

Al-Quds

force

, in charge of

"directing and coordinating all terrorist operations abroad"

:

Ahmad Vahidi

.

A witness said that it was Vahidi himself who

"proposed the attack in Argentina at that meeting

.

"

This is the man who

has just been appointed Minister of the Interior

by the new Iranian government.

Vahidi had already been his country's Defense Minister, and in that condition he traveled to Bolivia invited by the government of Evo Morales, in 2011. He already had the famous

Interpol

red alerts

on his name, but as he was part of a diplomatic delegation, he

went in and out from Bolivia as if he had been in Tehran

.

Interpol's red alert on Ahmad Vahidi.

The Argentine government

repudiated

Vahidi's appointment to the Iranian cabinet in 2009 - it was done by then-Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana, the new Defense Minister - and has now

repeated the gesture

with Foreign Minister Felipe Solá.

According to the official statement, the appointment of Vahidi is, for the government of Alberto Fernández,

"an affront to Argentine justice and the victims of the brutal attack against the AMIA ..." "... Vahidi is claimed for having had a key participation in decision-making and planning of the attack ... ”

.

And it ends:

"the people who have been accused of participating in the attack must be tried by the competent courts."

In the theory of international diplomacy, everything flawless.

But politics is something else.

The Government

endorses and strongly supports

an investigation led by Prosecutor Nisman, and his accusation of October 25, 2006, about who and how were

behind the

most serious terrorist

attack

in Argentine history, which left 85 dead.

But it

discredits and disqualifies

the investigation led by that same prosecutor, and his accusation of January 14, 2015, about who and how they were behind the

cover

-

up

of those accused of that same attack.

Nisman filed the latter complaint on Wednesday.

On Sunday he was found

dead

.

In the first complaint, which the Government pushes, Vahidi is accused.

In the second, which the Government disqualifies, Cristina Kirchner is accused: of making a pact with Iran to, among other things,

make Vahidi escape

.

This second investigation is ready for the oral trial, but Cristina manages to prevent it by obtaining a prior hearing - unprecedented and at her discretion - to denounce political persecution and request that

the trial never be held

, despite the fact that - as the government tells Iran -

that, and no other, is the natural instance for a defendant to defend himself.

In the cover-up, Vahidi's name appears in a conversation between the piquetero Luis D'Elía and Yussuf Khalil, linked to that mosque in Floresta.

That Vahidi was not going to testify for the AMIA

"is within the framework,"

says Khalil, while Iran spread that its then defense minister

would not be investigated by Argentina, despite the fact that it appeared in the Memorandum

.

For Nisman, that was just one of the proofs that, behind the façade of the

Memorandum

, what had actually been negotiated with Iran was a secret pact to provide

impunity.

That word comes back with force now, once again, on the 27 years of AMIA's ever-open wound.