![](\"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2006\/10\/amia.jpg\" "\\"amia\\"")
Agence France Presse – A judge issued an international arrest warrant Thursday for Iranian ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and other top former Tehran officials in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish charity in Argentina that killed 85 people. <\/p>\n
Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral told AFP he had asked the government of Iran as well as Interpol to hand over the former president on a warrant issued for "crimes against humanity" in the bombing attack on the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association, a Jewish charities federation office, in which 85 people died and 300 were injured. <\/p>\n
"A close analysis at the request of the national prosecutor resulted in this (warrant)," he told AFP. <\/p>\n
No one has ever been convicted for the bombing, which occurred on the morning of July 9, 1994. <\/p>\n
Another attack in 1992 on the Israeli embassy, in which 22 people were killed and 200 were wounded, also remains unsolved. <\/p>\n
Lawyers for the Jewish charity have long accused the Shiite militia Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, of carrying out the attack. <\/p>\n
A succession of Argentine governments has been accused of botching or undermining the investigation. <\/p>\n
President Nestor Kirchner has taken up the cause, as he has in many human rights cases stemming from Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship. <\/p>\n
Kirchner has said "grave failures of justice" had prevented the resolution of the case. <\/p>\n
Members of the World Jewish Council, including chairman Israel Singer and president Edgar Bronfman, have pressured Kirchner for progress on the case. <\/p>\n
Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman charged last year that a Lebanese member of Hezbollah, Ibrahim Hussein Berro, had participated in the bombing, citing Argentine security officials and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. <\/p>\n
The Shiite fundamentalist group Hezbollah denied the claims, saying Berro had been killed in southern Lebanon.
Iran, a key backer of Hezbollah, also has denied allegations that it was involved in the blast. <\/p>\n
The leader of the Jewish charity, Luis Grynwald, and Jorge Kirszenbaum of an Argentine Jewish organization umbrella group sought UN sanctions against Iran. <\/p>\n
Nisman said that Berro crashed a car bomb into the seven-storey building in Once, a neighborhood with numerous Jewish-owned businesses.
Argentina has the largest Jewish community in Latin America with 300,000 Jews. <\/p>\n
Still, some Jewish graves in Argentina have been desecrated near the "tri-border" area shared by Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, which US officials suspect is a haven for terrorists connected with Al-Qaeda.
Investigators say the men who blew up the Jewish charity and the Israeli embassy entered Argentina through the tri-border area. <\/p>\n
Besides Iran’s 1989-1997 president Rafsanjani, warrants were issued for 1989-1987 Irani intelligence and security minister Ali Fallahijan; former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati; former head of the Revolutionary Guards Mohsen Rezai; former commander of Al-Quds Forces and of the Revolutionary Guards Ahmad Vahidi; former cultural attache to the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires Mohsen Rabbani; former embassy third secretary Ahmad Reza Asghari; and former ambassador to Buenos Aires Hadi Soleimanpour, who was jailed in London in 2003 at Argentina’s request, but was freed for lack of evidence. <\/p>\n
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Agence France Presse – A judge issued an international arrest warrant Thursday for Iranian ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and other top former Tehran officials in the 1994 bombing of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-terrorism-a-fundamentalism"],"yoast_head":"\n