Timerman says AMIA: 'trying to stop investigation'

Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman questioned the leaders of the AMIA Jewish community organization as well as opposition leaders who oppose the Argentina-Iran agreement to investigate the 1994 bombing, and assured that “they frighten people by talking about a third attack.”

Timerman said: “there are people who are trying to stop in any way the AMIA case from being investigated. These are not the interests of a community that are involved, but the interests of other countries.”

The minister targeted the head of the Jewish organization, Guillermo Borger, by assuring that “in his despair to stop the case from moving forward he mentioned the possibility of a third attack. You have to have a responsibility when you make a statement, and in his attempt to stop the investigation his words backfired.”

He added that Borger “is saying that those of us who want a trial, want a third attack. He can’t gleefully say to me that there’s going to be a third attack.”

The minister expressed his “concern” over the “manipulation coming from countries that do not want a diplomatic solution with Iran and prefer confrontation and war. Argentina is not interested in that.”

He also questioned the recent statements made by DAIA members who say that “they will now talk to their lawyers in order to speed up the case.”

“Were they not speeding it up until now?” he wondered, as he recalled that a former president of the organization, Rubén Beraja, is still under investigation for allegedly covering up the attack.

“They can accuse me of many things. Of lying, of hiding something, of being a traitor, but they cannot accuse the memo. They are misinterpreting the word ‘questioning’ in English, they scare people and talk about a third attack,” he concluded.

The Jewish community in Argentina suffered two devastating terrorist attacks in the 90s. One against the Israeli embassy in 1992, and another against the AMIA offices in 1994.