Kirchner charged with treason for hiding Iran’s role in AMIA bombing

BUENOS AIRES (JTA) – An Argentinean judge ordered the arrest of former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner for treason and covering up the alleged involvement of senior Iranian officials in the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center.

Judge Claudio Bonadio ordered her arrest on Thursday and asked the Argentinean Senate to strip Kirchner, who now serves as a senator, of her parliamentary immunity, clearing the way for her arrest and trial.

Bonadio’s order also targeted other Argentinean officials in the effort to cover up Iran’s involvement in the attack, including former foreign minister Hector Timmerman, who is Jewish and is currently under house arrest due to illness, and former head of the Federal Intelligence Agency Oscar Parrilli, who was charged but not arrested. Parrilli was ordered not to leave the country.

Kirchner’s former legal secretary Carlos Zannini, Muslim community leader Jorge Alejandro Khalil, and pro-Iranian activists Luis D’Elía and Fernando Esteche were all arrested in raids on Thursday morning.

In his 491-page ruling, Bonadio wrote that the 1994 attack on the AMIA center, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 300 others, and a 1992 attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, were “acts of war” by Iran against Argentina. A memorandum that Kirchner had signed with Iran to jointly investigate the attacks appeared to achieve Iran’s goal of avoiding being declared a terrorist state, the judge wrote.

Bonadio charged that the former Argentinean officials and the Muslim activists had been involved in this “criminal plan.”

The arrest warrant against the former government officials is based on a 2015 accusation made by the late Alberto Nisman, a prosecutor charged with investigating Iran’s alleged role in the AMIA bombing. Nisman claimed that Kirchner had set up a “parallel communication channel” with Iran in order to avoid incriminating senior Iranian government officials in the bombing. Argentinean President Mauricio Macri canceled the memorandum in December 2015, in his first week in office.

Nisman was found dead in his apartment in 2015, the day before he was scheduled to present his allegations to the Argentinean Congress.

“Finally justice is advancing and all we can confirm now is that what Nisman said had a substance, Ariel Cohen Sabban, the president of Argentina’s Jewish umbrella group DAIA, told reporters on Thursday. “Now it will be the judiciary that will have to determine if that substance is valid or not.”