CRIME-ARGENTINA: Spotlight on Police in Israeli Embassy Bombing

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, May 5 1999 (IPS) - A key piece of evidence turned over to the Argentine Congress by three police officers seven years after the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy, which left 29 dead, has shed new light on the attack, in which police may have been involved.

Federal police chief Baltasar Garcia admitted Wednesday that police may have been guilty of “negligence,” and ordered an immediate analysis of a tape recording handed over to the courts Tuesday. But he said it would be “inordinate” to assert that police were implicated in the bombing.

The tape recording handed over by three officers who should have been guarding the embassy at the time of the attack demonstrates that their vehicle was ordered elsewhere by the police ‘Comando Radioelectrico’ three minutes prior to the bombing.

The three police officers had already testified before the Supreme Court – investigating the attack as it occurred in a foreign diplomatic body – that they had received an order by radio sending them to a nearby robbery.

But when the Court asked for the recording of the order, the ‘Comando Radioelectrico’ responded that there was no record of any such call.

The police have also been implicated in the 1994 bombing of the ‘Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina’ (AMIA) Jewish community centre, which left 86 dead and more than 300 injured.

Three Buenos Aires province police officers serving at the time of the AMIA attack and two retired officers have been prosecuted in connection with that bombing.

Garcia acknowledged Wednesday that the police could have been guilty of negligence in issuing the order for the vehicle to be moved from the embassy, or for the tape recording of the radio order to have been kept from the courts.

Interior Minister Carlos Corach ordered the police to launch an “urgent” probe to determine whether the tape was genuine and why it was only submitted seven years after the bombing. “We’ll have to see whether police complicity was involved here,” he said.

On Mar 17, 1992 the police guard stationed at the embassy left before the specified time – 14:00 local time – to accompany the ambassador to an interview. His replacement, meanwhile, was held up in administrative tasks in the police station.

The attack occurred in the interim, at 14:50, when the embassy was left unguarded. Meanwhile, the police vehicle posted outside the embassy left just three minutes before the building was blown to pieces.

Seven years after the bombing, the three police officers driving the vehicle submitted the tape recording of the ‘Comando Radioelectrico’ call ordering them elsewhere to the bicameral parliamentary commission supervising the investigations of the two bombings.

One of the agents said his nephew, studying in the police academy, told him that one of his professors had used the tape to illustrate how the police operated. The ‘Comando Radioelectrico’ had apparently sent the cassette to the academy to be reused.

The legislators immediately summoned the police chief, who admitted that the tape appeared to be a credible piece of evidence.”It has the characteristics of police frequency modulation. The question is whether it’s authentic,” said Garcia.

The inquiry into the embassy bombing has made practically no headway, due to the sluggishness of the Supreme Court, which is investigating the attack.

The local Jewish community – the largest in Latin America – and Israeli Ambassador Yitzak Avivran maintain that the delay was responsible for the second attack, the AMIA bombing.

Federal courts have made more progress in investigating the second bombing.

Federal Judge Juan Jose Galeano found a “local connection” – in which police were implicated – as well as an “Iranian connection” involving diplomats from that country, with which Argentina reduced its diplomatic ties to a single representative in each embassy.