Renewed calls for justice, 24 years on from deadly AMIA bombing
The entrance of the headquarters of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), on Pasteur street in Buenos Aires, on Wednesday hosted three events to commemorate the 24th anniversary of Argentina’s worst ever terrorist attack.
The AMIA and Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas (DAIA) hosted an official event to call for justice and an end to the impunity surrounding the so-far unsolved case into the 1994 bombing that took the lives of 85 people and left more than 300 wounded.
Memoria Activa and 18J, two victim splinter groups, also gathered at Pasteur street to recall the July 18, 1994 attack. The other of the three groups, APEMIA, decided not to participate in or hold any events this year.
The theme of this year’s official event was: “In times of impunity, remembrance is akin to demanding justice.”
Speakers included AMIA president Agustín Zbar; the Secretary General of the Organisation of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro; and Ma- rio Averbuch, the father of Yanina Muriel, one of the victims of the explosion.
Yanina was a 20-year-old student who worked in AMIA’s social services department.
The event began at 9.53am, the exact time of the explosion that destroyed the AMIA headquarters. Journalist Luis Nova- resio was master of ceremonies. National government officials and City Hall authorities, diplomats, relatives of victims and survivors, community leaders, and leaders from the political and judicial spheres, among others, were in attendance.
“The impunity we have is a threat to the freedoms we de- fend,” said Zbar in his speech.
Almagro added his voice to the calls for justice.
“The terror in our lives must be eradicated without nuance or contemplation,” he said. “terrorism is our main enemy. The most cruel, the most ruthless.”
“The whole of society can not and should not tolerate impunity with respect to those who committed the attack,” he added.
Zbar called on President Mauricio Macri’s administration to do more to close the case.
“The national government is required to take concrete actions that demonstrate its true interest in seeing that the accused are captured.
“It is not enough for the judge to free a warrant requesting the arrest of the former Iranian foreign minister. of the whole government. The entire government should be involved,” he added, referencing Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, who recently asked Russia to extradite a visiting Iranian official suspected of involvement in the 1994 bombing.
As in previous years, the names of each of the victims were read out loud at the main remembrance event, with candles lit and roses laid in honour of the fallen. Three years and six months after the death of Alberto Nisman, his mother Sara Garfunkel lit a candle in his honour.