By Lucila Sigal and Kylie Madry
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina’s Jewish community is set to commemorate on Thursday the 30th anniversary of a targeted bombing which killed 85 people, with President Javier Milei promising to right decades of inaction and inconsistencies in the investigations into the attack.
In 1994, a bomb-filled van hit the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, becoming the deadliest such incident in the nation’s history.
“Today we chose to speak out, not stay silent,” Milei said in an address on Wednesday evening. “We’re raising our voice, not folding our arms. We choose life, because anything else is making a game out of death.”
In April, Argentina’s top criminal court blamed Iran for the attack, saying it was carried out by Hezbollah militants responding to “a political and strategic design” by Iran.
Tehran has denied involvement and refused to turn over suspects, and previous investigations and Interpol arrest warrants have led nowhere.
Milei – a staunch proponent of both the Jewish community and of Israel – said on Wednesday he would propose a bill which would allow for the trial of the suspects in the attack in absentia.
He also said that his government would beef up the national intelligence system to prevent similar attacks from occurring again, while dedicating further resources into investigating the AMIA incident.
Argentine prosecutors have charged top Iranian officials and members of Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah with ordering the bombing, as well as an attack in 1992 against the Israeli embassy in Argentina, which killed 22 people.
“Although they may never be able to serve a sentence, they will not be able to escape the eternal condemnation of a court proving their guilt in front of the whole world,” Milei said.
The president called the April decision an “enormous step” in seeking justice in the AMIA case, he said that there was much more to go due to the “cover up by the terrorist state of Iran.”
Last week, Milei declared Iran-backed militant Islamist group Hamas a terrorist organization for its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
The president on Wednesday compared the attack on Israel with the 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires and demanded that Hamas release all of the hostages it had claimed, including eight Argentines.
(Reporting by Lucila Sigal and Kylie Madry in Buenos Aires; Editing by Michael Perry)
