Argentina’s Supreme Court yesterday upheld the verdict of a lower court that held that the initial investigation into the AMIA atrocity had been fatally flawed by the actions of the investigating judge, the state prosecutors and the government of Carlos Menem, all of whom had conspired together to pervert its course.
In the same judgment Argentina’s highest court ruled that the conspiracy to alter the course of the investigation had been activated on 31st of October 1995, a year and three months after the atrocity and that all evidence collected prior to that date remained legally valid. This means that Carlos Telledín - the used car dealer who supplied the van used in the attack and was acquitted in the earlier trial - is now likely to have face a fresh trial on the basis of the evidence now held to be valid. The police officers who tried to extort money from Telledín in the early part of the investigation may well be tried again also.
There are still Interpol “red notice” capture orders outstanding against a number of Iranians suspected having been involved in the deadly attack on one of the centers of Jewish community life in Buenos Aires. Moshen Rezaei is one of them and he’s probably too busy to worry about the attempts by the Argentine authorities to lay their hands on him as he’s currently running for the presidency of Iran. I have no idea what chance he has of winning but if he were to he wouldn’t be in a position to do much foreign travel.
This is what clerical pragmatism* looks like!
* This attack was carried out during the presidency and with the approval of Hashemi Rafsanjani, whom the NYT and others often lionize as a paragon of “conservative pragmatism.”
If Rezaei is elected, wouldn’t he get some kind of immunity? I think that Interpol doesn’t chase prominent government officials due to eventual political conflicts.