February 6, 2015 — New York, New York
AJC praised Uruguay for expelling a senior Iranian diplomat suspected of involvement with a bomb placed near Israel’s embassy in Montevideo. No one was hurt and the bomb was defused.
“Iran has a long record of complicity in terrorism in Latin America and around the world,” said Dina Siegel Vann, AJC Director of Latino and Latin American Affairs. “Extension of Iran’s state support terror network has come hand-in-hand with its aggressive expansion of diplomatic and economic ties in the region.”
Tehran is the chief suspect in the 1994 fatal bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. In 2007, Interpol issued “red notices”—arrest requests—for five Iranian officials, but the Iranians are still at large.
In 2013, Argentine state prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who led the AMIA investigation for a decade, issued a report detailing how Tehran has methodically placed terror operatives in several Latin American countries, using Iranian embassies, local mosques and front companies connected with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, to form "intelligence structures" that can strike when needed.
Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment on January 19. His murder has raised anew questions about who might be responsible for trying to obstruct the AMIA investigation. After nearly 21 years, no one has been convicted.
