Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

ARGENTINA: Expulsions in AMIA Blast Case Revive Plaintiff Discord

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Apr 14 2004 (IPS) - A court decision to remove two prosecutors from the case of the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre, in which 86 people were killed, has once again highlighted the controversial nature of the 10-year investigation.

Organisations of relatives of the victims, which have questioned the legitimacy of the trial from the start, are each now deciding where they will go from here.

On Jul. 18, 1994, a car-bomb destroyed the Israeli-Argentine Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires. Efforts to resolve the case have turned up questions of government collusion, cover-up and forged evidence.

Adriana Reisfeld, a member of Memoria Activa (Active Memory), a group of victims’ relatives, applauded the federal court decision to remove the prosecutors from the case on grounds that they had been aware of a purported 400,000-dollar bribe paid to one of the suspects to implicate four others.

But the Delegation of Israeli Argentine Associations (DAIA) took a more drastic stance, and is studying the possibility of withdrawing from the trial, said the group’s lawyer, Marta Nercellas.

Other organisations, like the Group for Clarifying the Unsolved AMIA Massacre (APEMIA), had simply refused to participate from the start, arguing that there were no guarantees of the independence of the Argentine justice system.

The group of Relatives and Friends of AMIA Victims, meanwhile, is ”seriously evaluating” what to do next, lawyer Julio Federik commented to IPS.

He said Tuesday’s decision to remove prosecutors José Barbaccia and Eamón Mullen, who were involved in the investigation from its beginnings in 1994, was unexpected.

The range of positions reflects the different stances taken by the victims’ families towards what has been a controversial investigation and trial of a crime in which evidence points to collusion by government officials, a cover-up, false clues, and the disappearance of key evidence.

The investigation has two parallel tracks, one of which involves the so-called ”international connection”, which has led to the issuing of international arrest warrants for 14 former Iranian government officials.

The other involves five suspects who make up the ”local connection”. The verdict is expected in June, because the trial will continue even if all of the plaintiffs withdraw, since they are not considered essential to the case.

Among those accused of providing logistical support to the material authors of the attack are mechanic Carlos Telleldín, who allegedly equipped the van used as a car-bomb to blow up the multi-storey AMIA building.

The suspects also include four former Buenos Aires provincial police officers, accused of picking up the van and turning it over to those who staged the bombing.

All five have been in prison for the past eight years.

Last year, the government of Néstor Kirchner signed a decree ordering the state intelligence agency, SIDE, to hand over its files and allow 14 of its former intelligence agents – previously silenced on the argument that ”secrets of state” were involved – to testify in the legal proceedings.

That led to confirmation that Telleldín had received 400,000 dollars from SIDE to testify against the four former officers, and implicate them in the case.

After it came out that federal judge Juan José Galeano knew about the payment, he was removed from both investigations.

The same thing has now happened to prosecutors Barbaccia and Mullen, which has revived the debate on the legitimacy of the legal proceedings.

The court ruled Tuesday that the prosecutors must have known about the bribe to Telleldín. The decision also said Barbaccia’s firm appeared in the deposition given by the mechanic in 1996, when he testified against the former police officers.

In addition, the day that Telleldín testified in the presence of the prosecutor, the mechanic received a phone call from his wife confirming that the money had been deposited.

Barbaccia said it was ”a matter of opinion” whether or not he had lost his impartiality because he was aware of the bribe.

Mullen, meanwhile, said he was unaware of the payment until it emerged in the oral phase of the trial, which began in August 2002. But the press had reported the bribe several years earlier.

Lawmaker Nilda Garré, with the leftist FREPASO party, who for a year headed the government’s special unit for investigating the AMIA attack and the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy, said she had denounced the two prosecutors last month for ”having put together an official version before investigating, and for choosing who should be charged, regardless of the truth.”

Nercellas told IPS that the decision to remove the prosecutors ”turns the trial into a farce” in which ”they are pretending that justice is being done.”

”We don’t know if we will continue legitimising this process with our presence,” said the lawyer, who added that her group wanted to ”assess the harm that would be caused by pulling out.”

For his part, Federik, who represents the families of around 20 victims, said they would have to reach a consensus on whether or not to continue taking part in the trial as plaintiffs.

Reisfeld, whose sister Noemí died in the AMIA blast, said she was pleased with the prosecutors’ removal. Memoria Activa ”has been fighting for all these years for the removal of the judge and the prosecutors, because we believed they were in collusion.”

”Now is the time to investigate who was protecting them higher up,” added the activist, alluding to the alleged cover-up by the government of Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

The May 2003 arrival to power of the centre-left Kirchner administration, which has taken a proactive stance on human rights questions, brought about a dramatic change in the case, which the plaintiffs have welcomed.

Among the irregularities surrounding the investigation have been the disappearance of 65 cassette tapes containing evidence in the form of telephone conversations; the presentation of false witnesses aimed at throwing off investigators; and a lack of cooperation at the highest political level.

Memoria Activa chose to participate in the trial with its own lawyers "to unmask the case," said Reisfeld, after noting that the group had to act as prosecutor and investigate "because the prosecutors told us that they ‘respected the timing of the judge’ when their role should have been to press him to speed up the investigations."

Reisfeld also told IPS that her group was systematically excluded by the prosecutors when they met with other plaintiffs in the lawsuit, and for this reason on Tuesday the court considered that the prosecutors acted "with a lack of impartiality".

The families of the victims have frequently expressed the conviction that the slow pace of the investigation has been due to factors beyond "traditional" judicial sluggishness.

During the Menem administration, many began to suspect complicity in a cover-up involving the government, the judge, prosecutors and leaders of the Jewish institutions at the time, in particular at DAIA.

In 1997, on the anniversary of the bombing, the families jeered Menem’s ministers who attended the memorial ceremony, and there were criticisms and direct accusations about the lack of progress in the investigation.

AMIA and DAIA leaders went to the presidential palace shortly thereafter to offer apologies for the families’ anger instead of backing their demands.

The differences deepened in 2001, when the oral arguments in the trial began. Laura Ginsberg, of APEMIA, said at the time that the case was "a circus" being staged to satisfy local and international public opinion.

But Memoria Activa opted to participate, although always distinguishing its own positions from those of the other groups.

Ginsberg, whose husband died in the blast, said Wednesday in a radio interview that her group never believed in the case, but that other victims’ relatives had said to her: "Let me have this one hope."

In trial declarations made in February, AMIA and DAIA asked that Telleldín and the four former police officers be convicted as "necessary participants" in the bombing and requested life sentences for all, except Barreiro, who they said had played a secondary role.

Families and Friends of the AMIA Victims backed those requests and added another: a petition for impeachment of judge Galeano for allegedly paying off Telleldín.

But Memoria Activa requested a life sentence only for Telleldín, and not for the former police agents, and based that difference precisely on the notion that the payment of the bribe undermined the seriousness of the prosecutors’ accusations.

"We regret that there is no overwhelming evidence of the participation of the police officers who we consider criminals for merely dealing with Telleldín and protecting him in the stolen car business, but they shouldn’t be imprisoned for the AMIA attack," said Reisfeld.

"Our relatives are not coming back, and we are very far from the truth about the bombing, but we at least want to begin to build real justice, and for the judge and the prosecutors to be first ones to be imprisoned for what happened to AMIA, because they didn’t act with negligence but rather in complicity," she said.