Iran's Malevolence
"These are sleeper cells. They have activities you wouldn't imagine. Sometimes they die having never received the order to attack."
"[Their goal is] to infiltrate the countries of Latin America and install secret intelligence stations with the goal of committing, fomenting and fostering acts of international terrorism."
"Any interpretation of this terrorist attack [Argentinian Israelite Mutual Association, Buenos Aires, July 1994] that ignores this salient characteristic runs the risk of sinning by omission."
"I could come out of this one dead."
Alberto Nisman, Argentine prosecutor, deceased
"With Nisman's suspicious death, a deal with Iran may no longer be necessary to derail the investigation."
Matthew Levitt, author of Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God
"Imagine if the attacks of 9/11 in America or 9/9 in London had been left unsolved for two decades, its perpetrators unidentified, the families of the victims left uncertain, and you have a sense of the moral outrage sweeping Argentina today."
Ben Macintyre, The Times of London
Mr. Nisman was quite correct in his premonition; he did 'come out of this one dead'. His theory that the attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association [AMIA] where 85 people were killed and hundreds injured was the work of Hezbollah, as a proxy of Iran made him a target of many, among them his own government at the very highest level leading to its president, as well as the leaders of the terrorist group Hezbollah and its Iranian Republic mentor.
He was to have brought evidence on Saturday to support his theory, and then later in the week give testimony about that collected evidence purporting to show President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner had arranged with Iran to discontinue the investigation into the 1994 car bombing of the Buenos Aires cultural centre. His accusation was summed up as that of a "criminal decision to fabricate Iran's innocence".
In an arrangement exchanging Argentinian wheat and beef for Iranian oil. This exchange would serve to pave the way for the Kirchner government to absolve the Iranian-directed, Hezbollah-produced attack, thus improving relations between the two countries, to resolve a $7-billion Argentine deficit of energy. Although Mrs. Kirchner's late husband who was president before her characterized the original investigation as a "national disgrace", it would be his wife who consolidated the disgrace.
In 2004, Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, became the first Argentine public figure to sign a petition demanding justice for the victims of the bombing. It took two years after then-President Nestor Kirchner appointed Mr. Nisman to begin a new investigation, for the prosecutor to conclude that Iran and Hezbollah had been behind the attack. Interpol warrants were filed against senior Iranian security figures and members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Sought to account was Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, president of Iran at the time of the atrocity, whom Mr. Nisman held had approved the attack the year previous to it having been carried out. The motive: to terrorize Jews wherever they live, in Iran's war against the State of Israel. The Jewish population of Argentina is the largest in the region, although it has fallen from its 300,000 peak in the 1960s to its current 200,000; third highest in the Americas after the U.S. and Canada.
A ten-man security detail was arranged for Mr. Nisman's protection in view of the danger he had felt he was facing and threats received. Despite that security, he was shot dead in his bathroom. A wound on the right side of his head was deadly, but though government security agencies immediately called it a suicide, there was no gunpowder residue on the dead man's hands. Evidently he had been shot from a six-inch distance, not a suicidal distance.
Initially it was said that the doors had been securely locked from the inside. But a locksmith called to access the apartment discovered the service door to be unlocked. And in a passageway leading to that service door a footprint had been found not yet fully assessed. The passageway connects to a neighbouring apartment. Whose foreign national identity has still not been established.
Mr. Nisman had identified Iran's cultural attache in Buenos Aires, Mohsin Rabbani, during the time of the attack as having been "responsible for coordinating these activities across all of South America". Alluding to unusual movement of Iranian diplomats preceding the AMIA attack. A network supported by Iran is thought to be present across South America, in districts bordering Brazil and Paraguay; with reports that Argentine prison officials have noted Farsi tattoos with Hezbollah imagery on some inmates.
The journalist who first reported the death of Argentinian special prosecutor Alberto Nisman last Sunday has now fled the country, saying he feared for his life. This is according to reports on Israel’s Ynetnews (English) and Walla (Hebrew) news sites, based on tweets on the online Argentinian Journalists’ Forum.
Labels: Anti-Semitism, Argentina, Atrocities, Conflict Societal Failures, Hezbollah, Iran
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home